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The Fine Arts Gallery at Saint Peter’s University is pleased to present, Gerald Hayes Reconstructing Die-Cuts. Gerry Hayes has exhibited his work in New York and various galleries, universities and museums in the United States and abroad. A Professor of Graduate Painting for many years at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he has also been a visiting artist at many university art departments. Until recently a longtime New Yorker, Hayes now maintains a studio and lives with his family in Massachusetts.
His painting surface for some time has been birch veneer wood panels. The flat shapes he used have been influenced by the shapes of stamped and die cut pressed paper used in industrial packaging.
In 2017 he began to mount the "readymade" packaging form itself onto his wood panels. Related shapes and patterns were painted to blend the relief shapes with the painting surface.
The die-cut relief forms that he uses are altered as he cuts, glues, and re-assembles the object, before painting. Rarely does he use the readymade paper as it is found. If he alters it by cutting and re-designing the form, it then becomes his. Gerry’s goal is to do more than embellish the object. He states, “These current artworks of mine are not a commitment to the future but a development from the past. As an artist open to ideas, new art will change.”
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