Artist: Peter Tunney
Title: WE LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL WORLD
Year created: 2015
Medium: Archival inkjet print in colors with full margins on archival acid-free textured cotton paper
Signed by the artist
Edition: 8/10
Height (inches): 26
Width (inches): 30
This piece is unframed.
Includes a certificate of authenticity.
Description of piece: PETER TUNNEY b. 1961 WE LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL WORLD 8/10
Archival inkjet print in colors with full margins on archival acid-free textured cotton paper, signed by the artist lower right in graphite, dated 2015, from a limited edition of 10 26 x 30 in. It is unframed and includes a certificate of authenticity
Artist bio: For twenty-five years artist Peter Tunney has roved Tribeca’s backstreets and SoHo’s sidewalks, an exuberant avatar for New York old and new. Those same two and a half decades saw him crisscrossing the globe, amassing a wealth of experiences: funny, harrowing, colored by tragedy and joy. He has always returned home, and in a very real way, made it back alive to tell the tale.
On the other side of these countless miles, he emerged an artist with a message, his own media machine, affirming: GRATTITUDE, DON’T PANIC, THE TIME IS ALWAYS NOW, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE AMAZING. Tunney is a dedicated explorer of our cultural lexicon and these words are the basis of his artistic practice. Similarly, Peter’s lived experience is conduit to his work, providing meaningful translation that renders GRATTITUDE not as a reductive slogan, but as a concept vital and urgent and largely missing from the cultural conversation.
Today, Tunney is pulling his messages from the canvas and transplanting them to the public domain, recreating his paintings as massive billboards overlooking the city. Heading to Yankee Stadium, perhaps snarled in traffic, one billboard intones GRATTITUDE in bright hued of red and blue. It is both declaration and question, laid happily at the eyes of tens of thousands of NYC residents each day. Entering New York City though the Midtown Tunnel, another billboard declares CITY OF DREAMS. Looming large against the cityscape, a bold intervention in Manhattan’s skyline, it is Tunney’s love letter to the city. Welcome to the City of Dreams.