Peter Gallov

Crafting alternative realms using the wide tonal range of graphite, Péter Gallov covers the page with eerie smoke floating between the curled-up layers of dreams and the vast voids of imagination. Gallov invites us into his cave of personal contemplation, where symbols shake off their hierarchies and start a new life. Galactic hot dogs, burning bones, sly insects, sweet puppies and hand-crafted trails of fire join in a subversive symbolist symphony, evoking the arcane magic of nursery rhymes. In the alchemy of graphite transforming into an illusory vapour, haunted-happy entities emerge with their smirks, gravitating towards the moons of unknown planets. Gallov’s world-building is a precision activity, where the creator must tend to every last teardrop, fly-eye and volcanic ash particle, amping up the contrast between his childish, regressive iconography and the die-hard determination of the works’ technical development. In his volcanic lore, Gallov tells tales about the circular path of the individual, the ever-returning pursuit of balance in a world where ghoulish forces take turns at twisting the ribbons of our fate.