Amy Pleasant and Pete Schulte

Amy Pleasant’s work explores the fragmented figure as sign or symbol. With a limited palette and an economy of line, she draws images like writing a letter, documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors. This repetitive and calligraphic drawing process creates a visual language over time, like an alphabet. In her clay work, she uses a similar process, cutting figurative forms out of hand rolled slabs, maintaining a sense of directness and intuitiveness that is similar to her drawing and painting practice.

Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994 and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 199. She has had solo exhibitions at Brackett Creek Editions, New York, NY; Geary Contemporary, New York, NY; Laney Contemporary, Savannah, GA; Institute 193, Lexington, KY; Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY; whitespace gallery, Atlanta, GA; Augusta University, Columbus, GA; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, IN; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Atlanta Contemporary, GA; Auburn Universi- ty’s School of Liberal Arts, AL; Rhodes College, Memphis, TN; Candyland, Stockholm, Sweden; and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, among others. Pleasant’s work has been reviewed in publications such as World Sculpture News, Sculpture, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, Artforum, Art Papers, Bad at Sports and BURNAWAY.

Drawing serves as the central axis for all facets of Pete Schulte’s work, which include the integration of works on paper, objects, and site-specific wall drawings. Whether working in two dimensions or three – on paper, the wall, in space or with time – the works are deliberately quiet, slow, nuanced, and restrained. Binary descriptions that seek to limit or define works as either representational or abstract no longer hold; Schulte’s interests reside firmly within the tangible reality of the drawing space and its seemingly limitless potential. “One of the pleasures of his objects and drawings is that they simultaneously invite and resist interpretation. The best ones are mysterious and materially sensual. In them, we see Schulte’s sensitivity to light, which is usually hushed, diffuse, and on the brink of fading away” (John Yau, Hyperallergic, 2021).

Pete Schulte received an MFA in painting and drawing from The University of Iowa in 2008. He has presented recent solo exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art, New York City; The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas; Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson New York; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Luise Ross Gallery, New York City; and The Woskob Family Gallery at Penn State University. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco; McKenzie Fine Art, New York City; Hemphill Fine Art, Washington D.C; Art on Paper with Rutger Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, NE; The Spring/Break Art Show, New York City; The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn; Looke&Listen, Saint-Chamas, France; and at Jeff Bailey Gallery. Schulte received the 2017 Southern Art Prize Fellowship for the state of Alabama, and was awarded a residency at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in 2019.