Peter Gallo:
Gods, Sluts & Martyrs
Adams and Ollman
April 11—May 10, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 5—7pm
Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce Peter Gallo: Gods, Sluts & Martyrs, the artist's first solo exhibition on the West Coast of the United States. The exhibition will feature paintings and mixed media collages on found objects created over the past decade. Gods, Sluts & Martyrs will open with a reception with the artist on Friday, April 11 from 5-7 pm and will be on view at the gallery in Portland, Oregon through May 10, 2025.
Gallo's painterly assemblages layer collections of fabric scraps, photocopied imagery, and found materials, including broken chairs, antique cutting boards, rusty baking pans, and old books, into informal compositions—what one critic described as "grunge arte povera." Atop these well-worn materials, each with its own history, Gallo intervenes with a tumult of thick paint, often in shades of red and pink, building up marks sometimes over many years. Like uncanny artifacts from some anterior future, these works contain a multiplicity of time: they feel both new and old, quick and slow, slapdash and carefully, ritually assembled.
Gallo's pursuit is poetic, reflecting back the beauty and poignancy of existing realities. He employs snippets of text—borrowed bits of songs or other artists' writings, common phrases from our everyday environment—squeezed through hypodermic needles in a script that is both barely legible and unmistakably direct. Violets Violets Violets (E. Dickinson), 2016-2025, echoes imagery from Dickinson's famous poem, while Emergency Entrance, 2019-2024, recalls hospital signage—distinct sources that emphasize the fleeting nature of existence. Through these words, Gallo explores language's core—its strangeness, seductiveness, and its complex semiotic relationship to images, revealing its heartbreaking inadequacy and brutality.
Gallo's aesthetic is anarchic; the works are messy, diminutive, and even abject, yet they evoke a sublime vastness. The title Gods, Sluts & Martyrs invites interpretation through frameworks of religious symbolism, power dynamics, sexual excess, and sacrifice. Central to the exhibition is Possession, 2023-2025, featuring stock reproductions of Bernini's ecstatic St. Theresa collaged across found weatherized plywood panels. Fluent in Catholic iconography (holding a PhD in Art History), Gallo uses a symbolic language rooted in the body—its transgressions, flesh, and control. The works on view evidence corporeal fragility and corruption through representations of blood, bandages, wounds, and holes—invoking the body at its limits in states of pleasure and pain.
Peter Gallo (b. 1959, Rutland, VT) lives and works in Hyde Park, VT. He received a BA from Middlebury College and an MA and PhD in Art History from Concordia University, Montreal. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and White Columns, New York, NY. The artist's work has been highlighted in publications including Artforum, the Village Voice, The New York Times, and Art in America.
Works
Peter Gallo
Kissing & Fucking, 2022
oil and mixed media on found wood
16h x 35w in
40.64h x 88.90w cm
PG006
Peter Gallo
Violets Violets Violets (E. Dickinson), 2016-2025
oil on panels
24 1/2h x 22w in
62.23h x 55.88w cm
PG010
Peter Gallo
MAMA AMERICA, 2025
oil, felt, and pins on found headboard
19 1/2h x 37w in
49.53h x 93.98w cm
PG011
Peter Gallo
Untitled Figure, 2020
oil on muslin glued and stapled to panel
35h x 19w in
88.90h x 48.26w cm
PG014
Peter Gallo
Untitled, 2023
oil on linen stapled to panel
13h x 24w in
33.02h x 60.96w cm
PG015
Peter Gallo
The Return of the White Throated Sparrows, 2024
oil on canvas stapled to found cabinet doors, chair
37 1/2h x 14 1/2w x 42 1/2d in
95.25h x 36.83w x 107.95d cm
PG016
Peter Gallo
Gods, Sluts, Martyrs, 2024
oil on canvas stapled to panel
21h x 15w in
53.34h x 38.10w cm
PG017
Peter Gallo
Eat Die, 2024
oil, inkjet prints, and spray paint on panel
29 1/4h x 19 1/2w in
74.30h x 49.53w cm
PG018
Peter Gallo
St. Sebastian, 2023
oil and buttons on canvas stapled to panel
24h x 19 1/2w in
60.96h x 49.53w cm
PG019
Peter Gallo
Emergency Entrance/Double Star, 2020–2025
oil on canvas on found plywood
18 1/2h x 35 1/2w in
46.99h x 90.17w cm
PG020
Peter Gallo
Beuys, 2018
oil on Time/Life book covers on found wood, nails
11h x 35w in
27.94h x 88.90w cm
PG021
Peter Gallo
Possession, 2023–2025
oil, acrylic, and inkjet prints on found wood
51 1/2h x 33w in
130.81h x 83.82w cm
PG022
Peter Gallo
Philosophizing & Crying, n.d.
oil on linen stapled to panel
15 1/2h x 21 1/2w in
39.37h x 54.61w cm
PG023
Peter Gallo
Theory Disgust, 2024
oil on linen on panel and found wood
37h x 16w in
93.98h x 40.64w cm
PG028