Lauren Michelle Peterson
Region: West
City / State: Chestertown, MD
I use devalued objects such as used furniture, discarded
housewares, and packaging as painterly marks to build abstract
compositions. Considering material properties and limitations, I
negate the objects’ use-function in favor of its aesthetic capacities.
This reordering of objects challenges the normative hierarchy of
value and rejects objects as symbols. My primary motivation in
the studio is play and humorous experimentation. I find perfection
laughable and instead allow my forms to succumb to mistakes
of my own hand and the inclinations of their materials. My
assemblages are awkward or exaggerated mutations of familiar
forms turned abject. These forms are components, able to be
rearranged within an installation, stand alone, or be taken apart
and repurposed, denying the idea of objective conclusion.
My recent work focuses on expectation and disappointment. I
consider the absurdity in domestic rituals that strive for an ideal.
Subverting the spectacle of decoration, I push the seductively
beautiful towards the overwhelmingly sickening. My interest lies
within the slippery demarcation between useful and useless,
appealing and repellent.