Cleon Peterson "The Shady Side" 2022, Signed Limited Edition Screen Print

Cleon Peterson "The Shady Side", 2022
signed and numbered hand-pulled screen print. 14x20.5 inches

Hand-pulled screen print on 290gsm Arches Rag paper with deckled edges.

Cleon Peterson is an LA based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings show clashing figures symbolizing a struggle between power and submission in the fluctuating architecture of contemporary society. Cleon’s paintings are monochromatic while channeling at the same time the fashion sensibility of the early 80′s, complete with skinny ties and day glow colors.

MESSAGE FROM THE ARTIST
We've entered a new age of global crisis. Modern dread, hopelessness, and existential anxiety have become common and relegated to the subconscious. The individual walks the streets feeling a sense of alienation and that society, coopted by media technology, politics, and an undercurrent of hate and confusion, is unraveling.

The ideas sold to us for so long that technology and human compassion will save us from our dark nature look more like magical thinking.

Human ethics and our shared knowledge of historical truth seem to be fading away, replaced by the almighty idea that everything is "just business" and that we must take what you can get now.

In the name of power, politicians summon mobs to violence and demand our outrage and attention with promises of returning us to a past that never was or promising us futures that will never be. At the same time, capitalists offer us redemption and meaning through the last thing that connects us all, consumption.

It all feels like the start of a new brand of crisis that humanity has never experienced before, giving us the sallow feeling that we are both at the end and the beginning of something bigger than the unceasing human
conquest for power.

— CP