Peter Doig: Charley's Space

Viewers of a picture by Peter Doig usually experience the vague sensation of having seen a similar motif somewhere else before. This is due to the fact that Doig bases most of his pictorial compositions on models taken from the flood of media images that saturate us daily, appropriating quotations from record covers, sequences from horror movies or citations from art history. Doig's oil paintings--"harmless" only at first glance--come in alienating colors with strongly atmospheric effects. Stylistically composed of sampled painting methods, they present a thoroughly unnerving picture of nature. Doig helps himself freely to the collective archive of images, irritating his viewers by refusing to spell out what the picture is precisely about or where it takes place. His eerily familiar mountain landscapes, forest and ocean works, with their scattered human figures, seem to depict dream sequences or snapshots from stories which are bound to end badly. Published in conjunction with the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht.