Greene Naftali
Exhibition
WALTER PRICE
Pearl Lines
Ground Floor & 8th Floor

Walter Price has spent a decade refining what Peter Schjeldahl once called his “style-defying style,” threading abstraction with an evocative realism that hovers on the brink of legibility. His third solo exhibition at Greene Naftali arrays two distinct bodies of work across the ground- and eighth-floor spaces, featuring new paintings and works on paper that comprise a hybrid genre all his own. Recurring symbols scratch at a personal cosmology but don’t reduce to tidy narratives, keeping the ties that bind formalism to identity or politics stirringly unhinged. A phalanx of umbrellas provides single-occupancy shelters, roving and precarious; fields of stamped or stenciled stars deconstruct the flag, dispersing its authority. Mental landscapes studded with charged objects give way to frieze-like scenes of milling crowds, briskly sketched but with a satirist’s eye for the telling detail.
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Walter Price
Don’t have hope, be hope!, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, Flashe, and chrome pen on canvas
76 x 101 inches (193 x 255 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
enchanted darkness, 2025
Acrylic, gesso, and chrome pen on wood
10 x 8 inches (25 x 20 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
Reprogramming!, 2024
Acrylic, chrome pen, gouache, and gesso on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price
Somewhere on pionono, 2023
Acrylic, chrome pen, and gesso on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price
Allow the consequences to unfold as they will, 2023
Acrylic, gouache, Flashe, gesso, and chrome pen on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
The faultless memory that loses nothing, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, gouache, and chrome pen on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price
Devils in disguise, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm)

Walter Price
Remove the veil, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025
Walter Price
Myths make language, 2025
Acrylic, gesso, zip ties, paint brushes, chess pieces, mending plates, and screws on wood
36 x 36 inches (92 x 92 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
Harrowing Winds, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, and chrome pen on canvas
76 x 101 inches (193 x 255 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, chrome pen, and gouache on framed drawing
26 x 33 inches (65 x 85 cm)

Walter Price
The brazen opulence of light in darkness, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, chrome pen, and gouache on wood
22 x 30 inches (56 x 76 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
There was that smell of the sea, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price
The cold indifference of the stars, 2023
Acrylic, collage, PVC glue, and gouache on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
If you don't like the way the egg tastes you invent another way to cook it – Lawrence Weiner, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, PVC glue, collage, and gouache on wood
22 x 30 inches (56 x 75 cm)

Walter Price
The glowing languor of slitted crescent moon, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, PVC glue, and photo collage on wood
18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
The mind is like a parachute, 2025
Acrylic, gesso, and chrome pen on wood
36 x 48 inches (91 x 122 cm)

Walter Price
Entangled in the complex mesh of ideas, 2025
Acrylic, gesso, and chrome pen on wood
40 x 40 inches (102 x 102 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
The Moment-to-moment rupture of life’s sense of continuity, 2025
Acrylic, glitter, gesso, and chrome pen on wood
36 x 60 inches (91 x 152 cm)
Price’s latest work continues to “operate color as a vehicle of surprise,” as Darby English has noted—though here the artist’s signature polychrome palette gravitates toward an ocean blue. At times, that shade also douses the gallery’s surrounding architecture, tapping affective wells beyond the ascension or melancholy blue is often said to conjure. Throughout, Price gives equal weight to what is given and what is withheld, tempering the abundance of each teeming surface with subtler moves of obscuring or deflection. Masked figures invoke the art-historical tradition of the clown or fool as an archetype of concealment; framed artworks are painted over and words half-effaced, urging attention to flex and heighten.

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic and gesso on canvas
52 x 61 inches (132 x 154 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2023
Acrylic, Flashe, gesso, ink, and chrome pen on wood
18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic and gesso on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
36 x 48 inches (91 x 122 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, chrome pen, gouache, and gesso on wood
36 x 48 inches (91 x 122 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
36 x 36 inches (91 x 91 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on wood
24 x 36 inches (61 x 91 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | Ground Floor, 2025

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, chrome, and Flashe on wood
30 x 40 inches (76 x 102 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic, gesso, and gouache on framed drawing
20 x 26 inches (51 x 66 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic and gesso on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price
It has to rain before you can see where all the leaks are at, 2024
Acrylic and gesso on wood
16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

Walter Price, The weight of thought, 2025 (detail)
“Everything starts with a line,” Price has said, describing drawing as foundational to his practice, and here its affinities to painting reach a new degree of symbiosis. A vibrant series on canvas titled Drawing, for instance, bounds each central figure with a swift dashed line—a vector of energy that courses through Price’s work, stringing the eye along its path. Other ingenious modes of paint application stretch the possibilities of the graphic mark: whether troweled in neat striations or incised with the blunt end of a brush; lines that meander in bright acrylic or accrete in glints of chrome. Like pulses in a forcefield, Price’s drawn elements lend his paintings their structure and kinetic hold, and Pearl Lines advances his fundamental pursuit of what each medium can give to the other.

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | 8th Floor, 2025

Walter Price
Are those Amiri jeans?, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil, Sharpie, and graphite on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price
Drawing 3, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil stick, and chrome pen on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | 8th Floor, 2025

Walter Price
Drawing 1, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil stick, and chrome pen on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price
Drawing 6, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil stick, and chrome pen on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | 8th Floor, 2025
Walter Price
Headlines, 2023
Acrylic, graphite, Sharpie, and gesso on canvas, framed with color plexiglass
83 x 63 x 4 1/2 inches (210 x 160 x 11 cm)

Walter Price
Drawing 4, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil stick, and chrome pen on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price
Drawing 2, 2023
Acrylic, gesso, oil stick, and chrome pen on canvas
80 x 60 inches (203 x 152 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | 8th Floor, 2025

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price
Clown shoes, 2024
Ink on paper
9 x 12 inches (23 x 31 cm)

Walter Price, installation view, Pearl Lines, Greene Naftali | 8th Floor, 2025