Cleon Peterson

It’s always special to meet an artist you admire—especially when that artist is the incredibly talented Cleon Peterson, one of our undisputed favorite contemporary artists. His highly distinctive style and unfiltered observations on the world around us make his work stand out, not to mention the turbulent life he’s lived before reaching where he is today. So, last week was, to say the least, an exciting moment.

In 2015, the American artist seemed to have permanently joined the ranks of those working on a global level, having moved all over the world for shows and projects—from Paris to Detroit, followed by Hong Kong—before finally setting foot in Belgium for a five-day stay in Antwerp, where we sat down for a conversation. Parallel to this development, or perhaps as a result of the growing global interest in his work, Peterson has been expanding the range of mediums he works with. He debuted in Antwerp with a life-size sculpture, alongside several new paintings and a black version of his porcelain sculpture created with Case Studyo. These works came together for an exhibition named after the large sculpture: The Judgement, presented at the recently opened PLUSONE Gallery, curated by Jason Poirier dit Caulier.

We meet in one of Antwerp’s numerous specialty coffee bars, this particular clean-cut one on the edge of the popular Zurenborg area, just a 5-minute car ride away from PLUSONE, which is located behind the house where Poirier lives, slightly hidden in the neighboring district of Berchem. Peterson, wearing his North Face coat throughout our conversation, had visited Ghent the day before with Poirier, and it’s clear that the artist is in need of some rest after all the traveling. Fortunately, he doesn’t hold back in speaking his mind because of this, which, in retrospect, turns out to be the red thread of our conversation. Cleon Peterson speaks his mind without filter, in exactly the same way he creates his work.

Having grown up in a bohemian household in Seattle, with dancers (his mother was a ballerina) and artists around him all the time, Peterson was ‘groomed’ by his mother to become an artist from an early age. Eventually, he dropped out of high school to focus on his paintings. Some years later, however, he decided to sign up for college, moving to Brooklyn, New York, where things started to go downhill. Brooklyn, being the gritty place it was in the early nineties, opened up the dark side of life to him, which directly inspired his work (specifically in his Street Scenes). But it also brought drug addiction into his life—his personal exploration of darkness, if you will.

He moved back to Seattle, trying to get clean, but soon after, followed his older brother, artist Leigh Ledare, to San Diego, where Ledare was trying to make it as a professional skateboarder. The new environment opened up the door to illustration in the skate world, with Peterson really pushing the envelope in skateboard artwork while working for Tod Swank. Unfortunately, addiction also crept back into his life, resulting in years of being in and out of the hospital and eventually jail. It is clear that it could have gone wrong easily at that point, but Peterson—being where he is today—talks about it without any need to glamorize his remarkable comeback after being strung out for years. Instead, he honestly explains that the addiction was something that brought him some peace of mind during a period when he was craving just that.

In addition to quitting drugs for good, working for Shepard Fairey’s Studio Number One marked the start of a major turnaround in Peterson’s life. It gave him a chance at a time when most people had distanced themselves because of his erratic, addictive behavior. By the beginning of the 2000s, the artist was fully focused on what he had never stopped doing, but had definitely been distracted from during those years: creating art. Our conversation moves on to how, after earning both a BA in Graphic Design and subsequently an MA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, the worldwide attention for his work has grown in recent years—and what kind of new opportunities this has brought him.

In the artist’s eyes, the new situation primarily gives him the space to create what he enjoys most: larger works. This is evident in the murals he’s been doing across the United States, as well as in his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an opportunity to create a mural in Antwerp this time, so that will have to wait until the sequel to this exhibition. He underscores that his murals should not be considered street art, a discipline Peterson clearly despises due to its generally superficial qualities. Instead, the murals are simply the largest scale of his confrontational vision, aligned with his paintings. In Peterson’s eyes, they represent the most interesting platform to create a certain dynamic with the viewer. His dystopian scenes of violence and displays of strength are meant to confront the spectator. And what better place to do this than the street?

Peterson explains how the exhibition in Antwerp came about. Originally, he had been working on a similar exhibition for a gallery in Paris, but after the terrorist attacks in the city, they asked Peterson to move away from violence in his work. Obviously, Peterson denied their request, and an alternative presented itself in Antwerp. Around the time of the cancellation, the artist was working on his Destroying the Weak porcelain sculpture for Case Studyo, one of Jason Poirier’s other projects. Together, Peterson and Poirier aimed to take his sculptural work to the next level for the exhibition at PLUSONE, eventually resulting in the 2.06-meter-high sculpture.

There’s a certain paradox in the Paris exhibition being canceled after the terrorist attacks, and Peterson’s work eventually being shown in Belgium. Since the Paris attacks, in many ways reminiscent of the artist’s works, Brussels and Antwerp have been ‘guarded’ by armed military personnel walking the streets. Peterson proves to be the pessimist reflected in his work, and we agree that it’s very likely things won’t improve in the near future. These military men, who are nothing more than authorized armed human beings, don’t make him feel safer. In fact, they might even increase the likelihood of violence occurring. However, Peterson argues, the real blame lies with those who make the decisions—not the actual pawns walking the streets.

On that note, we leave the coffee bar and head to PLUSONE, which is everything one could wish for as an art lover. Tucked away behind Poirier’s house, the gallery is a hidden gem in the middle of the Berchem neighborhood. Walking into the space, the intimidating The Judgement looms large in all its shiny black fiberglass glory. Intimidating indeed. The exhibition is perfectly suited to the z-shaped space, and Peterson expresses how the crowd at the opening rather surprised him: “Not the collector kind, just nice people.” He intends to return to Antwerp as soon as possible, promising to bring his wife and three children with him. And then our time is up. Cleon and Jason will visit one last place in Antwerp before he has to catch his flight back to Los Angeles: the remarkable Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum, possibly for some inspiration on their shared future endeavors.

As I walk away from the gallery, I instantly realize that in the last hour, Peterson never gave me the kind of desirable answer to any of my questions. Without looking me much in the eye, he answered everything without thinking too much about it. And although, as a fan, I had heard or read some of his outlooks on life before, hearing him speak in the perfect equivalent of his work—idiosyncratic, honest, and without filter—made me realize that all he had shared with me was nothing but his truth. A truth very close to my own. And that is exactly why, for me, Cleon Peterson is one of the most truthful artists working today.

PLUSONE is located at Sint-Hubertusstraat 58+ in Antwerp, for more informaiton see here >

For more work and information on Cleon Peterson see here >