Archived Exhibition
Aaron Petersen | Sliding Scale
June 16 - July 9, 2011 
Reception: Saturday, June 18, 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Artist Biography

Wealth Distribution in the United States: The top 1% holds 40% of the wealth in this country.  The top 10% controls 2/3 of America's Net Worth, this leaves roughly 14% of the wealth for the rest of the population.

Sliding Scale: A pay as you can system. In the current economic climate, perhaps buying a slice of a painting is more realistic for most of us.

As an artist and painter I have been playing with ways to explore these statistics and this aspect of our society. I find it fascinating in a horrifying way.  I have struggled to find the right recipe to explore this phenomenon visually.  Eventually I came upon the idea to physically de-construct the paintings themselves that is to stop thinking of them as a unique whole.  Literally, I decided to cut up the finished paintings into "ribbons" or "scraps".  The inherent destruction of the whole seemed the only accurate exploration for where this body of work is taking me. 

Just as things come apart, so too am I interested in how they go back together.  How to re-construct something which has been pulled to pieces is where the hope lies, building something new, something different. The compositions are meant to stand on their own as a whole, individually, or create a new dialogue when the strips are mixed and matched from different paintings.

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