Paintings, assemblages and works on paper by Peter Gallo.

As suggested by the show’s title, lifted from David Douglas Duncan’s book by the same name, Goodbye Picasso underlines a basic principle of Gallo’s practice: a punk-rock attitude towards cultural authority. For example, a copy of Duncan’s photo essay on Picasso’s twilight years at his 15th-century chateau at Vauvenargues is transformed into a drawing surface upon which the artist erases the eyes.

Gallo uses simple formal structures and gestures in an often confrontational fashion. In the tradition of punk, neo-punk, Lettrism and Situationism, he steals the words and images of others—snippets from Roland Barthes, Freud, Mondrian, Tony Shafrazi’s famous vandalisation of Guernica (Kill All Lies), and queer pornography -– all turn up on occasion, mixed in with lyrics gleaned from Gallo’s favorite music: The Cocteau Twins, Dusty Springfield, The Magnetic Fields and Joy Division.

Gallo lives and works in Hyde Park, Vt. He has had solo shows at White Columns (White Room), New York (2005) and the Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago (2004). He is a doctoral candidate in art history at Concordia University in Montreal, where he is authoring Medicalisation and its Discontents: The Artist as Case History. He works as a psychiatric social worker in a rural health care agency in northern Vermont and is a member of the Grass Roots Art and Community Efforts in Hardwick, Vt. In addition, he has contributed criticism to Art in America and Art New England, and his work has recently been discussed in the New York Times, Artforum and Art in America.