Matthew Marks Gallery

Peter Cain

In the late 1980s Peter Cain started the paintings for which he first became known: automobiles, ranging from classic muscle cars to late-model sedans, distorted into hallucinatory new forms. Painted with precision, their gleaming surfaces intensify the seductiveness of the advertising images on which they were based. Klaus Kertess called them “literal and figurative icons of autoeroticism.”

In 1995 Cain made a group of drawings and paintings of his partner Sean. Part figure studies, part landscapes, they depict the subject’s reclining head, neck, and shoulders on a sandy beach. They were a departure from the car paintings, a development Peter Schjeldahl hailed as “the creation of a new high style able intelligently to capture intimate nuances of contemporary Eros on a public scale.” The following year Cain began another body of work: paintings and drawings of Los Angeles gas stations and chain stores. A few weeks before his third exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, where these paintings were to be shown for the first time, Cain died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was thirty-seven years old.

Peter Cain (1959–1997) had his first one-person exhibition in 1989. His work was included in the 1993 and 1995 Whitney Biennials and has been exhibited at museums in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Selected Works

Exhibitions

PETER CAIN

June 24–September 1, 2017

1062 North Orange Grove
7818 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles

PETER CAIN

September 8–October 22, 2016

522 West 22nd Street
526 West 22nd Street
New York

PETER CAIN
The Sean Pictures

July 5–August 12, 2005

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER CAIN
More Courage and Less Oil

October 5–November 23, 2002

522 West 22nd Street
New York

PETER CAIN
New Paintings and Drawings

February 1–March 15, 1997

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER CAIN
Paintings, Drawings, and Photographs

March 16–April 25, 1995

1018 Madison Avenue
New York

PETER CAIN
New Paintings

December 4, 1992–January 28, 1993

1018 Madison Avenue
New York

Group Exhibitions

ONE HUNDRED DRAWINGS

November 8, 2019–January 18, 2020

523 West 24th Street
New York

A DRAWING SHOW

October 4–November 29, 2014

526 West 22nd Street
New York

100 DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition

November 3–December 22, 2001

523 West 24th Street
New York

PAINTING: NOW AND FOREVER, PART I

June 26–July 31, 1998

522 West 22nd Street
New York

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION
Richmond Burton, Peter Cain, John Chamberlain, Katharina Fritsch, Andreas Gursky, Roni Horn, Gary Hume, Andy Warhol

July 7–July 28, 1995

522 West 22nd Street
New York

NAYLAND BLAKE, RICHMOND BURTON, PETER CAIN, GARY HUME

July 6–September 30, 1992

1018 Madison Avenue
New York

AN EXHIBITION TO BENEFIT ACT-UP
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power

December 5–December 21, 1991

1018 Madison Avenue
New York

Books

PETER CAIN

PETER CAIN
The Los Angeles Pictures

PETER CAIN
More Courage And Less Oil

ONE HUNDRED DRAWINGS

100 DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition

Posters

PETER CAIN
New Paintings and Drawings

PAINTING: NOW AND FOREVER, PART I