Ara Peterson

Follow This Artist

Born: 1973

Hometown: Boston, MA

Lives and Works: Providence, RI

Education: BFA Film/Video/Animation, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, 1997

Ara Peterson Bio

About The Artist

Artist Ara Peterson fuses technology and craft to make his abstract geometric artworks. Working across mediums—paintings, prints, sculpture, installation, video—Peterson creates optical illusions with hyper-saturated, psychedelic coloring and a physicality that points to his labor intensive process. For his 2009 Ratio 3 show Turns into Stone, Peterson made his retro wall reliefs by feeding complex wave formations into a computer that laser-cuts the slats that he then assembles into eye-boggling designs. Also included in this exhibition were a series of backgammon boards that the artist produced with his father. These pieces demonstrate the same colorful geometry for which he is known, but the patterns are actually rooted in ceramics and memories from his family history. Peterson's work proves that abstract geometry can be personal and intimate.

Peterson has had several solo exhibitions at Ratio 3 and showed his Arcade work at Art Basel Miami Beach and his Energy Fields at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Missouri in 2007.

Watch the music video for Panda Bear's "Aslatian Darn," directed by Ara Peterson

Ara Peterson Gallery Art

Galleries

Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA

Ara Peterson Permanent Collections

Select Permanent Collections

Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Altoids Curiously Strong Collection/New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY
The Deste Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
The Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY