Petzel Gallery is pleased to present Waterworld, a single painting show by New York based artist Thomas Eggerer.

Originally presented at the 2015 Lyon Biennale, Waterworld displays a simultaneous winnowing of subject, and an expansion of scale.

While taking cues from paintings concerned with the classical topos of the bather (from Seurat to Richard Hamilton), Waterworld focuses on the modernist motive of the mass in a contemporary scenario, in which labor and leisure have become indistinguishable.

The viewer is confronted with a borderless swimming field dotted with men, spilling beyond the frame, bisected by a foamy wave. In the past, Eggerer's paintings have often situated figures within abstract painterly gestures; Waterworld's landscape, at once familiar and inviting, is equally disorientating—here the artist places the viewer just above the water, possibly on its precipice, but without alignment of horizon or shore. Liquid becomes the social field these young men act within and against, building on Eggerer's decades long interrogation of the visuals of collectivism, participation, and communal social dynamics.

Petzel Gallery is located at 456 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011 and 35 East 67th Street New York, NY 10065. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM.

For press inquiries, please contact Janine Latham at janine@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.