Cleon Peterson’s visceral depictions of human depravity are a bit of a warped favourite with us – the kind of thing we’d like to hang on the wall of We Heart Towers to remind the interns what happens if they are in any way displeasing – and the Los Angeles artist has had his nose to the easel since we last featured him and his 2013 collection There Is a War.
End of Days is unmistakeable Peterson, a series of brutal tableaux with his signature palette of black and white and the even more horrible red and black. His scenes have the mythical storytelling of Ancient Greek art, with all its warmongering, raping and pillaging subject matter and its rudimentary figurative style, transported to the present day. The modern world offers no shortage of contextual settings for Peterson, and his quasi-savages (modesty protected by designer undies) graphically exert their total, terrible dominance over the oppressed on city streets, in parks and in the countryside. New Image Art is the theatre of war until 12 April.
Cleon Peterson
The Light Bearer
18 x 24”
Acrylic on wood panel
Cleon Peterson
Disappear Into Midnight
16” x 16”
Acrylic on wood panel
Cleon Peterson
Vengeance
96 x 72”
Acrylic on wood panel,
12 pcs
Installation photography © Platinum Cheese
