The reclining nude has shaped the visual grammar that codified the male gaze. A woman at rest but not always on her own terms. Recent re-engagements with this form navigate that tension. The gaze may remain, but with less certainty about what it finds.
Peter Peri’s Reclining Nudes join the effort to reframe the tradition. Rather than rejecting the form, Peri engages it knowingly. He retains the structure of the reclining pose but takes away its availability. He replaces body with arcs, angles, and mathematical precision.
The nudes rest on their own terms, where reclining belongs to them, and is not offered to the viewer.
Peri disarms the tradition’s voyeuristic history and opens space for relation rather than objectification.
