2009 Honoree :: Peter Doig

Two x Two takes great pleasure and pride in honoring Peter Doig for his continued generosity and his commitment to the fight against AIDS. Peter Doig is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished and inventive painters working today. Few artists of his generation have done as much to explore the evocative possibilities of paint and its capacity for depth and meaning. His works explore the psychological and physical spaces between description and invention, and representation and abstraction.

Peter Doig draws from a wide range of sources, including personal snapshots, cinema, art history and advertising. These sources, however, are merely a point of departure for the artist's imagination. An uncommon palette and a varied approach to the material and surface of paint transforms his literal sources into scenes that evoke dreams or recollections. Doig's paintings, by turns melancholic, dramatic, pastoral and hallucinatory, are quiet occasions for contemplation and looking that take us outside the realm of our normal daily experience.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1959, Peter Doig was raised in Canada before returning to the UK in 1979. He lived for many years in London before moving to Trinidad, where he now lives and works. In London, he studied art at Wimbledon College of Art, St. Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 1994 he was nominated for the Turner Prize and later served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery until 2000. Peter Doig is the recipient of numerous awards, having been honored most recently with the prestigious Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Society for Modern Art, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. In 2003 he and fellow artist Che Lovelace initiated STUDIOFILMCLUB, a weekly series of free film screenings in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Peter Doig is a professor at the renowned Düsseldorf Art Academy, a post he has held since 2005.

In 2008 Tate Britain organized a major survey of the artist’s work, bringing together important series of major paintings and related works on paper from the past 20 years. This widely acclaimed exhibition – the most in-depth and comprehensive overview of Peter Doig's work to date – traveled from London to the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Prior to the Tate exhibition, Peter Doig participated in the Carnegie International, the Whitney Biennial and SITE Santa Fe.

He has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions worldwide, including Blizzard Seventy Seven, Kunsthalle Kiel, Kunsthalle Nuremburg, and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1997; Echo Lake, Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, Berkeley Art Museum, and The Saint Louis Art Museum, 2000; Charley's Space, Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht and Carré d'Art contemporain de Nimes, 2003; Metropolitain, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, 2004; Peter Doig: Works on Paper, Dallas Museum of Art, The Gallery at Windsor, Vero Beach and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2005-06; Drawings, and STUDIOFILMCLUB, Museum Ludwig Cologne and Kunsthalle Zurich, to name only a few.

Peter Doig’s paintings can be found in many important public collections, including Tate, London; The British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

As part of Two x Two for AIDS and Art 2009, distinguished artist Peter Doig will receive the amfAR Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS in recognition of his continuous support of amfAR’s programs. The presentation of this award will take place during a lunch on October 25th, hosted by Christen and Derek Wilson and sponsored by Bombardier Flexjet, to whom we offer sincere appreciation.

Two x Two for AIDS and Art is honored to have Peter Doig as the featured artist of our special 11th year and extends special thanks to him, Michael Werner Gallery, New York, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, for their extraordinary support of Peter and of this event.