Peter Combe Featured in Visual Art Source (VAS)

"The patriotic title notwithstanding, Peter Combe’s "Stars and Stripes" is less about the impending Independence Day holiday, or the sci-fi-film sequel, than the mysteries of appearance and representation. So what better subjects than the film stars of the 1960s and the Op Art and hard-edge abstraction of the same period? If this sounds like yet another postmodern-PC critique of celebrity culture and formalism, the tools of devilish global capitalism, be advised: they’re delightful and ingenious contrivances that call into question the nature of vision as well: they’re art-as-philosophy, without tears.

"Combe’s medium- to large-size assemblages may read as paintings, but  they’re also kinetic artworks that change slightly as the viewer moves, somewhat like lenticular photographs. The studio glamour head shots of Grace Kelly, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Tyrone Power and Dirk Bogarde appear from a distance to be shimmering, yet semi-ironic homages, á là Warhol, especially when partially obscured by large red block letters spelling out DICK, POWER, and DILF. Approach further, however, and the works become mysterious, phantasmic. Combe: “There is a magic that occurs, a trick of the eye where color seems to occupy space — a void — at once ethereal, yet seen from another angle the whole appears as if a ghostly image, veiled in gossamer.”

—DeWitt Cheng

The full article is continued on the Visual Art Source website.