May 9, 2024
May 9, 2024 – David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of American artist Walter Price (b. 1989). A new painting by Price will be included in the forthcoming David Zwirner: 30 Years exhibition, which will inaugurate the gallery’s new Los Angeles space at the end of the month, and a solo exhibition of the artist’s work is planned for the gallery’s Los Angeles location in November 2024. Price will continue to work with and be represented by Greene Naftali in New York.
Price has come to be known for his richly vibrant paintings and drawings, which bypass strict allegiances to representational or abstract modes. In his work, the artist sensitively employs an idiom of recurring motifs that traverse the real world and the dream world, memory and collective history: children’s faces in three-quarter profile, partially rendered cars, furniture, animals, and stars slip in and out of his layered pictorial landscapes and are juxtaposed with areas of vivid, contrasting colors, textured brushstrokes, enigmatic inscriptions, and wandering lines. Price’s canvases and works on paper not only experiment freely with color, line, and space, but also reveal emphatic shifts in perspective, suggesting scenes and imagery that the artist ultimately leaves for viewers to absorb and contemplate on their own.
David Zwirner states: “I was first introduced to Walter Price’s work by Hilton Als in 2022 when he included him in the exhibition Toni Morrison’s Black Book here at the gallery. I was immediately struck by Price’s utterly assured and complex compositions. His work, which exudes mystery, playfulness, and a careful attention to process and color, sets him apart among the emerging painters of his generation. I am thrilled to be working with him, and am very much looking forward to seeing his painting in conversation with work by other gallery artists at our anniversary exhibition in Los Angeles later this month.”
About the Artist:
Walter Price was born in 1989 in Macon, Georgia, and served in the US Navy for four years before entering art school on the GI Bill. He received a BA from the Art Institute of Washington, Arlington, Virginia, in 2011 and an AA from Middle Georgia College, Cochran, in 2013.
The artist has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. In 2018, Price was the subject of a self-titled solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York. The same year, Walter Price: Pearl Lines was presented at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. In 2019, Walter Price: We passed like ships in the night was held at the Aspen Art Museum. The Camden Art Centre, London, presented Walter Price: Pearl Lines in 2021, which was accompanied by the first major monograph of the artist’s work. In the fall of 2024, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, will present the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date. Price has given the title, Pearl Lines, to the majority of his solo presentations, suggesting that each exhibition expands beyond the confines of its own time and place, becoming part of a larger body of work.
The artist has also had solo exhibitions at the Modern Institute, Glasgow (2016; 2018; 2020; and 2022); Karma, New York (2016); Greene Naftali, New York (2020; 2022); Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin (2022); 14a, Hamburg (2023); and Modern Art, London (2024).
Price has also been included in several notable group exhibitions, including Fictions, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2017); the 2019 Whitney Biennial; 100 Drawings from Now, The Drawing Center, New York (2020); The Drawing Centre Show, Le Consortium, Dijon (curated by Franck Gautherot, Seungduk Kim, Tobias Pils, and Joe Bradley) (2022); and Black Melancholia, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2022). Also in 2022, paintings by Price were included in the exhibition Toni Morrison’s Black Book, curated by Hilton Als, David Zwirner, New York.
The artist has been granted several residencies throughout his career at the Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York (2017); Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva, Florida (2018); Fürstenberg Contemporary, Donaueschingen, Germany (2019); and the Camden Art Center, London (2020).
Work by Price is held in prominent institutional collections worldwide, including the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Roberts Institute of Art, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London.