Raised in New Hampshire and currently based in Northwestern CT, Peter Gerakar previously maintained a New York City studio for nearly two decades. Gerakaris’s multifaceted practice spans painting, murals, mosaics, origami sculptures and books, and large-scale installations. His intricate work explores the complexity of our relationship with the environment — often depicting flora, fauna, and ecological systems as phantasmagorical collages that reflect the fragmented interplay of beauty and peril in the natural world.
Gerakaris’s artwork is held in notable permanent collections, including the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies Program (Gabon), Berkshire Botanical Garden, Capital One, and the New York City Department of Education, among others. He has completed numerous public art commissions through institutions such as Cornell Tech, Bergdorf Goodman, and PS101K via the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program.
With international exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Art and Design, the Bronx Museum, Wave Hill, Whatcom Museum, and the Mykonos Biennale, Gerakaris has been featured in major media outlets such as Architectural Digest, Financial Times, The New York Times, and W Magazine.
Peter D. Gerakaris’ artwork tickles the retina and mind by filtering a broad array of Nature-Culture themes through a kaleidoscopic, global lens. In this space where nature and culture converge, the artist passionately seeks to bridge our profound disconnect with the environment. The artist’s distinctive interdisciplinary visual language is grounded in handmade processes that span painting, murals, mosaics, large-scale public installations, works on paper, printmaking, and origami sculptures.
The artist’s dynamic use of color is essential to his work: it arouses feeling and tension by pushing the limits of our color perception beyond the boundaries of pictorial composition. Whether synthesizing traditional gold leafing techniques with vibrant Neo-Byzantine-brushwork in the “Icon Series” — which transposes endangered and exotic species from around the globe as the iconographic characters of our contemporary natural environments — or rendering the illusion of collage by hand through his “Post-Pop Botanic”, “Botanic-Topographic”, “AquaVerse”, and “Oculus” strands, the artist constructs imagery like a phantasmagorical collage to represent society’s fragmented relationship with the environment. The complex layering of motifs that form each holistic artwork functions like a glue that seeks to mend this Nature-Culture divide.
Known for his kaleidoscopic visual language, Gerakaris invites audiences into a vivid world where nature andculture harmonize through layered compositions, bold color, and conceptual depth.
Gerakaris’s exhibition centers on “Turtle Oculus Tondo” — a portal-like painting through which viewers can enter an environment evoking our blue planet. Rendered in his “aquatic-topographic” mode, the artwork deploys a hand-painted collage approach of organic vignettes with aerial perspectives of oceanic topographies, abstract microscopic details, and motifs such as endangered sea creatures amidst undulating coral. Regarding contemporary maps of coastlines and reef formations as endangered because of the climate crisis (and by extension, much of the flora and fauna that inhabit these regions), the artist seeks to channel a sense of topographical flux.
Two panoramic, large-scale “hyper-graphic” murals flank the tondo — both enlarged from original preparatory paintings — transforming the gallery into an immersive environment. The artist has felt a greater urgency to honor marine elements since becoming a scuba diver, and his exploration of the sublime water world and his firsthand encounters with myriad sea creatures permeate this series.
"There’s a certain urge we all have to romanticize nature’s creations, whether its wildflowers, rainbows, Bambi, or organic lettuce. As much as I love these things, I also recognize it’s the same force that generates hurricanes, scorpions, and plants like Ricinus – a beautiful, decorative plant that also happens to be toxic. I’ve long been obsessed with this duality – how something so seductive and beautiful could also be poisonous – and what an indifferent power nature truly is."
- Peter Gerakaris
To learn more about artist Peter Gerakaris, please visit www.petergerakaris.com.
