This Is Not That: Peter Lynch
Curated by pujan gandhi
Exhibition Dates: February 13 - March 28, 2026
ATLANTA, GA – Sandler Hudson Gallery is pleased to announce This Is Not That: Peter Lynch, a solo exhibition curated by Pujan Gandhi.
On the occasion of Peter Lynch’s largest solo-exhibition in North America, the Glasgow-trained artist will present an immersive assemblage of his signature paintings and works on paper at Atlanta’s Sandler Hudson Gallery.
Lynch (b. 1971, UK) began formulating his idiosyncratic approach to abstraction in the early 1990’s, under the guidance of artists such as Callum Innes, alongside notable students Halley and Sue Topkins and Jim Lambie. There, he discovered an abiding interest in principles of painting exploring color/non-color, probing the space between tactility and translucency. He continued his education at Goldsmiths, University of London, taught with the likes of Michael Craig-Martin and Terry Atkinson. Lynch explains the conceptual underpinnings that continue to inform his practice: “this history [of painting] is not a development that is particularly linear; instead, I think it is very circular. My work relates back to previous generations in a circular forward-looking process.” Returning to Glasgow as an Artist-in Residence in 2000, Lynch embarked on his interrogation of the painterly object and surface by means of bodily gesture–with rhythmic, sensual zips of the artist’s finger tracing and erasing the very structure of the grid itself.
In recent years, Peter Lynch has focused his energies on dissecting the monochrome: each painting arrives at its satisfying (and uncanny) color layer-by-layer, via roller, brush, and finger, applied and subtracted until the patterns and textures resolve into a suspended stasis. As viewers, we find ourselves playing a game of hide-and-seek too. In works such as it almost feels miraculous [2022], a slab of silky forest green reveals the faintest ekes of tangerine; the edge oozes a wisp of blue. For Lynch, “[a] painting’s history can never be fully eradicated, an echo of the substrate is always subtlety evident upon the surface.” This tension–between presence and absence, gesture and non-gesture, expressive and mechanical–is felt in the artist's longstanding exploration of watercolor as well. In works such as This is that III 28.04.25 [2025], Lynch loads the brush to expunge a pigment’s chromatic range in an assured stroke. His intuitive approach to geometry recalls the tradition of the Zen Ensō (circle), expressing pure, unmediated consciousness. But what we see on the page is not a moment of contact with the artist’s hand, but rather a representation of it: vis-a-vis a monotype that magnifies artist’s intimate marks. The way in which Lynch’s questions the notion of the visual record echoes in his resonant titles as well [e.g. Keep an eye on the Mirror ]: he explains that the titles are left “ambiguous, avoiding any direct reference or meaning to the works...creating a wedge between the visual and the linguistic.” In this way, Lynch playfully tackles on the mantle of Ad Reinhardt’s “Art is not” aphorisms--elevating aesthetic sensations above all else.
Peter Lynch has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally since the mid-1990s, with solo exhibitions at Transformation Gallery, London (2024), The Bear, London (2023), Window / Finestra, Venice (2023), Connect Art, San Francisco (2018), @NONAME, New York (2012), Andrew Mummery Gallery, London (2003, 2005), Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2003), Edinburgh Printmakers (2004), Galerie Katharina Krohn, Basel (2002), Glasgow School of Art (2001), the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford (2000), and the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (1995). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as Vanner Gallery, Salisbury, UK; Alex Stoller, Split Level/Rimadesio, New York; ASC Gallery, London; Edel Assanti, London, Terashita Gallery, Tokyo; CCA Glasgow; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh; Hunter College of Art, New York; and Vértice Galería de Arte, Lima, among others. In addition to maintaining his active, multi-media studio practice, Lynch has been Head of the Anish Kapoor Studio, London, since 2010.
About the Curator:
Pujan Gandhi is an Independent Curator who bridges historic and contemporary art with a transnational perspective. From 2018-2024, he oversaw the South, Southeast Asian, Himalayan, and Islamic Art Collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. There, he mounted the first reinstallation of its galleries in over twenty years, made significant acquisitions in the realm of Mughal and Pahari Paintings, Himalayan Art, and Indonesian textiles, simultaneously realizing installations by Dayanita Singh, Zarina Hashmi, and Monir Farmanfarmaian. Having organized a host of international exhibitions, he's published on a range of topics: Isabella Stewart Gardner's travel albums in India, strategies of 21st century museum display, and edited the multi-author monograph Anish Kapoor: Reverie & Rupture. Previously, he served as a consulting curator in the African Art Department at the High Museum, Atlanta; worked as an art advisor; and guest lectured at SOAS, University of London--where he earned his Post-Graduate Diploma and MA in the History of Art and Archaeology whilst cataloging at the British Museum. He was raised in Atlanta, Georgia (Lovett School, Class of 2005) and is a graduate of Middlebury College.