EXHIBITION IMAGES | WORKS | PRESS RELEASE 

APRIL 15 – MAY 14 | 79 NEWTOWN LANE, EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2 – 4 PM 
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HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY is pleased to present a two-person exhibition with Steven Cox and Sarah Peters. Both artists exploit classical techniques, mastery of craft, and motifs from the canon to address contemporary concerns in painting and sculpture. 
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In her sculptures, Sarah Peters questions and subverts ancient, classical, and symbolic figuration and their permutations over different styles and periods. Peters observes how, over time, fervent emulation of styles – whether cultural, religious, or art historical – develops to what she refers to as “the pleasure of contemporary misinterpretation”: scale and proportions are tweaked, references are extended and sublimated, and meanings are twisted and obscured. Peters’ black and bronze heads offer a personal and intuitive reconstitution of human visages whose appearance remains mostly constant, but whose interpretations are fluid and ever shifting.
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Using the similarly restricted palette of traditional underpainting, (burnt sienna, van dyke brown, black and white), Steven Cox separates and reconstructs the canvas plane into dazzling visual depth and texture. Through horizontal and vertical repetition of color, pattern, and layering, the artist explores the possibilities of the linear stripe. The paintings nod to poetic structures like stanzas, as flat monochrome planes are aligned alongside spray painted gestural marks and densely layered surfaces of oil and negative space. Cox pays homage to his homeland through his physical use of Hessian Jute for material as well as with painting titles that reference Scottish poet, Robert Burns. The beautiful, battered and wise surfaces of these delicately labored paintings share a kinship with the emotional polarities of Burn’s classic writings.
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Steven Cox was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and is now based in Edinburgh. He holds a BFA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory & Curating from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh. Recent exhibitions have been with Galerie Jerome Pauchant, Paris; Annarumma Gallery, Naples; Galleri Benoni, Copenhagen; The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, and The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Cox has curated, written and conducted interviews with many leading contemporary aritsts under the moniker Hunted Projects. He is currently in residence in Dusseldorf, Germany for receiving the Lepsien Art Foundation international Grant.
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Sarah Peters was educated at Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA), The University of Pennsylvania (BFA), and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Certificate) and currently lives and works in Queens, NY. Solo and two-person exhibitions include 11R, NY; Bodyrite (with Mira Dancy) at Asya Geisberg, NY; Edward Winkleman Gallery, NY; and John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, among others. The artist is a recipient of awards and residencies from John Michael Kohler, WI; New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), NY; The Fine Arts Work Center, Providence, RI; and The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, NY. Her work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times; L Magazine, and Artforum. 
Peters is represented by 11R in New York.
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