Date/Time
Date(s) - October 26, 2023
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
IU Architecture Program, Republic Building auditorium
Categories No Categories
Los Angeles-based artist, designer, educator, writer, and curator Heather Scott Peterson exhibits a body of sculptures titled “Controlled Substances.” Peterson’s most recent work explores material histories and the consequences of human culture on the planet. The sculptures in “Controlled Substances” explore the syntax of matter and acts of human transfiguration that bring the physical inventory of the world into and out of being.
Against the history of natural phenomena, and their collusion in shaping our planet, human interventions maintain a remarkably brief tenure. Our alterations to landmass, the extraction of resources, domestication and consumption of organic precincts, and the development of technological regimes, seem like modest amendments compared to the shaping of mountains or the drifting of oceans.
The substances of the world exist in fixed quantities, with only the possibility of being redistributed, recomposed, or transfigured through time. The sculptures in this exhibition function like assignations of organic and inorganic transformation, measuring intractable rates of change and refusing anchorage in time, slipping from the assurances of physical permanence.
About the artist:
Peterson has taught fine art, design, and architecture at numerous institutions in the United States, and she is currently a Professor of Interior Architecture at Woodbury University in Los Angeles. Her studio practice is centered around the transformation of materiality in space and time, and has included work in painting, sculpture, architecture, furniture, ceramics, textiles, photography, and the culinary arts. She received a B.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a M. Arch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. In 2014 she was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and has been a member of the viewing program at The Drawing Center in New York since 2007.
Controlled Substances Exhibit:
The Controlled Substances exhibit runs October 26–December 1 at The Miller Gallery at the Republic Building, 333 Second Street, Columbus, Indiana. Hours are Mon.–Fri., 9:30am–4:00pm when IU classes are in session.
