For months, artist Peter Tunney has been carefully collecting giant pieces of the infamous Taj Mahal casino from Atlantic City to convert these ruins into The Sinking of the Taj Mahal, a site specific installation at Faena Beach.
The artist’s access to the demolition of the casino led to an obsession with the monumental pieces from the façade and rooftop of the building, which created the illusion of the self-titled, “8th wonder of the world,” the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino. Giant chandeliers, a two-ton ornate concrete elephant and towering letters will all emerge out of the sand. Tunney’s installation of metal, glass, gold, concrete and steel finds extreme beauty in ruins.
Peter Tunney’s work probes our culture by mining images from newspapers, magazines, and art books and reinterpreting them through his own unique perspective. His recent works, in which refreshingly optimistic phrases and quotes are colorfully painted over collaged headlines, serve as a subtle attack on our culture of fear and ennui. As our media sources relay stories of death, destruction, hysteria and greed, Peter whimsically overpowers them with his own headlines, such as “Don’t Panic,” “Believe,” “Gratitude” and “Change the way you see everything.”
After having a career on Wall Street, Tunney turned to art and opened his first gallery in New York in 1991. In 2010, he became the first tenant of the iconic Wynwood Walls when he opened the Peter Tunney Experience gallery.
About the Artist
Peter Tunney is a Neo-Pop artist working with language and text. His large-scale paintings are created from collaged packing materials and newspapers. Drawing imagery and phrases from popular media sources, he created block-letter aphorisms such as “DON’T PANIC” and “THE TIME IS ALWAYS NOW.” This technique references the language-based works of both Christopher Wool and Mel Bochner. Born in 1961 in New York, NY, the former Wall Street executive, and friend of Peter Beard currently lives and works between New York, NY and Miami, FL.