Grey Lagoons - Gary Panter
November 15 – December 19, 2025
Opening November 15, 2-5 pm
Keijsers Koning is pleased to present "Grey Lagoons," a solo exhibition by Gary Panter. The show features a series of drawings and works on canvas that explore the fusion of representational narratives with abstraction. These compositions challenge our sensibilities and dismantle conventional notions of the norm.
The all-over compositions suggest an erasure of narrative or at least our expectation of one. Each work cuts its own form, like a brine pool formation in a vast ocean that never quite mixes with the overlying seawater. While Panter uses cartoons to tell stories and investigate the formal aspects of narration, the introduction of gestured abstraction liberates these forms, allowing him to come fully into his own. Non-figurative work can emerge when stylization becomes so extreme that it arrives at non-objective territory. This is where Panter's hand-painted dot compositions come into play.
In cartoons and illustration, dots have long served as textural devices for filtering or obscuring. Panter transforms this convention, using dots as a filter that converts non-objective paintings into something more alien than typical painted abstraction, yet strangely familiar. Through his deconstruction of cartoon imagery—particularly the negative space between comic forms—these voids become opportunities and the basis for abstraction, losing all reference to the imagery from which they derive. Panter elevates negative space into a weighted form of its own, finding freedom not through rejection of his roots within cartooning but excavating the formal DNA and reveal the new possibilities.
Gary Panter was born in Durant, Oklahoma (1950), moving shortly to Sulphur Springs, Texas where after many years he resides again. He studied painting at East Texas State University and moved to Los Angeles in 1976, where he established himself as a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, design, and performance.
In the late 1970s he exhibited his first major suite of paintings and drew posters and fliers for punk bands including The Germs and The Screamers, creating visual work that captured the raw energy of the Los Angeles punk scene. In 1980, Gary published "The Rozz-Tox Manifesto," a highly influential document that directed his generation to infiltrate the mainstream with underground ideas and culture, articulating a philosophy that would guide his artistic practice.
Gary's paintings occupy a central place in his prolific output throughout the 1980s and beyond. He was artistic director for and designed the sets and puppets for Pee-wee's Playhouse, which won him three Emmy Awards, as well as designing record covers for bands including The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Frank Zappa. His artwork was featured in galleries at this time starting with Overheat in Tokyo and Gracie Mansion in NYC
The early 1990s saw Gary gain a greater visibility through gallery shows and started elaborate psychedelic light show performances, creating immersive environments that blended painting, installation, and theatrical elements. In 2006-2007, Gary was a featured artist in the touring exhibition Masters of American Comics, with his work shown at the Jewish Museum and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
In 2008 a 700-page monogram was produced by Picturebox, Inc edited by Dan Nadel and essay contribution by Robert Storr. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the Clementine Gallery, NY; Pierogi, NY; Dunn and Brown Contemporary, TX; Keijsers Koning, TX; and Fredericks Freiser Gallery, NY (since 2011). His work is held and has been shown in major museum collections including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; New York's Anthology Film Archives; MOCA, CA; Milwaukee Art Museum; The Jewish Museum, NY; Pheonix Museum of Art, AZ; and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT.
Gary Panter was a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 2001-2019. He has produced four graphic novels: Jimbo in Purgatory (Fantagraphics); Jimbo's Inferno (Fantagraphics); Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise (Pantheon); and Cola Madnes (Funny Garbage). He was awarded the Chrysler Design Award for Design Excellence; the Klein Award from the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art; The Pollock-Krasner Award; and has won three Emmy Awards.
Please contact the gallery at info@keijserskoning.com or call 469.961.5391 for images, additional information, or acquisition of the work.