Peter Wu

Artist’s Statement

My primary interest is in the way objects cast memories and how to transform these memories into raw material. We all fill in certain memories, sometimes embellish and have gaps in between them. My work focuses on these gaps of recollection and their inherent ephemerality. By reclaiming and repurposing objects found in thrift store and garage sale wastelands, I am providing the opportunity for these fragments of the past to haunt the present. I make decisions to interrupt, condense and expand these objects’ meaning to arrive at a space between its past self and renewed potential. These snippets of memories are recomposed into a somewhat personal poetry blurring the boundaries of their histories with my own. Through a strange familiarity, and without irony, I wish to bring my viewer in and close the distance between them and my work. I hope to raise questions about how we position ourselves in relationship to these discarded remnants, their former past as signifiers of sentimentality, and how meaning and history can be located between objects that are and are not present.

Website: peter-wu.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2008-2012

2012
Shed No Tears for Broken Nails, Greene Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA

2011
Zzyzx Rd. / FFF, Galerie Anaïs, Santa Monica, CA

2008
Carcinoma California, Power Galerie, Berlin, Germany
Black Scabs on a Phantom Limb, Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica, CA

Select Group Exhibitions from 2010-2013

2013
The Archaic Revival Revival, Zic Zerp, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2012
Saucy Leechcraft, JB Jurve, Los Angeles, CA

2011
Baker’s Dozen III, The Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA

2010
Charnel House Scraps, Kunsthalle LA, Los Angeles, CA; Presented by Greene Park Gallery

Community-based Project

2012-2013
The HeArt Project, Los Angeles, CA

Honors

2013
Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant Nominee, Los Angeles, CA

EDUCATION

M.F.A, 2001
New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute

B.F.A., 1999
Multi Media and Sculpture, University of Windsor