‘Under the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars’
KAIKAI KIKI | Tokyo

Kaikai Kiki Gallery is pleased to present "Under the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars," a solo exhibition of Cleon Peterson’s works opening on February 13, 2023.

Cleon Peterson is based in Los Angeles, CA, and he has had solo exhibitions in various cities including New York, London, Paris, Sydney, and more. Peterson's works are characterized by a subdued tone and stylized, graphical compositions, but they depicts scenes of violence and struggle that could be described as extremely primitive.

This is his first solo exhibition in Japan in seven years. Twenty-seven new paintings will be on view, including a large new painting created to suit the Kaikai Kiki Gallery space.

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