Opening reception Friday, March 1, 2024, 6-9 pm
Additional programming to be announced shortly
Hours: Tues & Thur 6-8 pm; Sat 12-5 pm
after / time collective gallery is thrilled to invite you to the opening of Mending, Sarah M Peters’ first exhibition with after / time on Friday, March 1, 2024, from 6:00-9:00 pm. The exhibition runs March 1-30, 2024.
Mending consists of two series of paintings, in which domestic spaces and “landscapes” are painted in vibrant colors and naive rendering. Throughout the work color is a driving force that claims its own confidence, allowing the otherwise hidden mundanity to perform. The interior spaces are of rooms of homes the artist has lived in since 2020. Perspective and scale are often pushed and pulled, distorting rooms creating a slight instability in the domestic space. A figure reappears in the rooms, contorted, and often precariously existing within the bodily spaces of ledges, floors, corners, and furniture. The interiors are cluttered with tchotchkes but also Plants, smoke, a broom- everyday objects become enshrined in the home that has been baptized sacred through quarantine. Necklaces, a phone and a cat are often around or in the piles and messes that portrait an inner life's outer expression. Some reappearing objects of daily life are indicators for a space situated in a recent time, and grounding the viewer into the mundanity of daily domestic life currently or recently. By allowing color to lead the work, banalities are visually elevated. The simple beauty of our lives we otherwise rush through, is able to take our attention. The phones, Electric plugs and cords become connectors to the otherside of the wall, and therefore the rest of the world, buzzing with energy and information.
The landscapes often are river banks and road shrubbery oozing through fences saturated in colors. Screens, lamps and cords on chairs, tables, trees and in rivers, place the memories in rooms being projected into a moment of presence in the forest. The tension in the color palette and specific objects in close proximity don’t allow the landscape to function as a decorative commodity, the pristine forest is interrupted by our attention towards screens and the need for an electric plug.
Following the onset of the pandemic, Sarah Peters’ practice shifted from large scale installations with found objects and re-appropriated materials, to being confined to a much smaller space and adjusting their scale accordingly.
In Mending Peters installs paintings amongst everyday objects allowing the space to have a resemblance of a living space. The viewer is invited into an interior that connects personally and collectively with themes of home, rest, isolation, wonder, healing, pain and despair. The paintings are placed thoughtfully to indulge the viewer in a narrative of self and is saturated in a desperate grappling with finding vibrancy and joy.
Sarah Peters is a multidisciplinary artist interested in transforming the mundane everyday objects through formal choices that intend to invoke narrative and imagination. Their Process oriented practice employs a variety of mediums such as photography, painting, sculpture, and video.Her practice is an emotional and material exploration of the intersection of narrative, memory, collapse, and the practice of archiving and playful world building as a means of hope. They see their practice as a way of processing and illustrating their experience in an honest- yet humorous way. Their work has been shown at the Playground Gallery, Congress Yards Projects and The Lodge, in Portland Oregon. They built installations and exhibited work in Mannheim, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Kaiserslautern, in gallery, club and festival settings. Sarah received their MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland OR in 2020 and currently teaches and works in southern Oregon.
(This exhibition was made possible through the generous support from Prosper Portland, the Ford Family Foundation and RACC)