Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings and collage by Lamar Peterson. Over the past few years, Peterson has become known for depicting the black suburban everyman and his nuclear family set in dreamlike landscapes. Twisted, however, represents the artist's decided turn away from the childlike wonder and vacant plasticity of his archetypal subjects and their idyllic settings. Inspired partly by CNN and partly by horror movies, his figures are twisted, stretched, and mangled. Weather is a malevolent force. A dystopian vision has replaced the eerie casual detachment: whereas once his characters smiled, now they explode. For this exhibition, Peterson incorporates a new sense of dimensionality with craft-store supplies, framing devices, and a loosening of his once irrefutable brushwork.
About the Artist
Lamar Peterson was born in 1974 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He will be the subject of a five-year survey in 2008 at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (traveling with catalogue), and has had previous solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles; and Deitch Projects, New York. He has exhibited in numerous group shows including the Fifth International SITE Santa Fe Biennial 2004, New Mexico; The Drawing Center, New York; and the Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (upcoming). This is his second solo exhibition with Fredericks & Freiser.