For this exhibition, Aaron Petersen brings together a series of paintings that offer windows into painterly environments inspired by human experience and the unseen worlds that surround us. Observation, memory, nature and invisible systems and energies all inform his lush oil paintings that meld abstraction and figuration.
In Petersen’s paintings, an ethereal, playful sense merges with the impression of a percolating maelstrom, evidenced in both his palette and manipulation of paint. Fastidious markings move over gauzy, colored grounds where dripping, floating and diaphanous forms meld with grid-like structures. Tight, sweeping lines and whirring, effervescent dots mingle with voluminous shapes in scenes that resonate with notions of urban grids, plant and sea life or cellular bodies floating in an otherworldly atmosphere. Petersen’s aggregate worlds are shaped by navigating forces of chaos and control. These opposing energies drive his formal vision and the philosophical groundwork of his practice.
“There is a simple structure upon which I build each painting: control and chaos. I am fascinated with the dialogue created as disparate worlds collide,” he states. “I attempt to capture the human experience with a playful sense of color and mark making, with passages sometimes verging on the unsettling. My version of our environments are inhabited by invisible characters such as static, electros, and amoebas colliding with notions of memory; whether it be whimsical notions of childhood or the rigors of adult life.”
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