Passage (#38 on marker)

Artist: Gord Peteran

My artwork is fuelled by the historical decorative arts.
Unlike most artists I’m not looking for “new”, but rather the very, very old.
I’m interested in testing the boundaries of what we know and trust.

Disrupting the iconography of culture slightly, either by altering their context or proximity, can destabilize assumptions and suggest ideas that seem both correct and wrong in the same moment.

Doorways are thresholds of our buildings, and also represent the threshold of our anxieties.
Two doorway openings placed apart to imply a room, stand as both sentinels and facilitators of flow and passage.
A dining table, . . . with oars, placed between these frames suggests both the safe space of home and references to this rural location.
A table implies gathering, and in many ways represents the core of the family.
Are there directional implications to a dining table?
Is it in any way mobile?
Who propels the ideas discussed at dinner?
Can they stagnate or change course?

The emblems and events of summer at a lake cannot be underestimated.
They become imbedded in our psyche for life.
Perhaps because they are filled with moments of joy, of discovery, learning, curiosity and camaraderie, . . . (the conditions necessary for creativity).

The new conditions our world now faces provide potential opportunities.

This artwork’s references are vast, from global warming and migratory populations, to the intimate summer ponderings of a child.
The swinging doors once hanging from the doorframes have long since disappeared with only vague remnants of each left visible.
Visitors can freely pass into, through, and out of this scene, setting in motion their own transformative art moment.