Not There

Archive
4/29 - 6/3 2023

Heather Scott Peterson
Controlled Substances

Neither A Palace nor A Shore, details

Heather Scott Peterson, Neither A Palace Nor A Shore, detail, 2021

Against the history of natural phenomena, and their collusion in shaping our planet, human interventions maintain a remarkably brief tenure. Our alterations to landmass, the extraction of re-sources, domestication and consumption of organic precincts, and the development of technological regimes, seem like modest amendments compared to the shaping of mountains or the drifting of oceans.

The substances of the world exist in fixed quantities, with only the possibility of being redistributed, recomposed, or transfigured through time. Controlled Substances explores the syntax of matter, and acts of human transfiguration that bring the physical inventory of the world into and out of being.

The sculptures in this exhibition function like assignations of organic and inorganic transformation, measuring intractable rates of change, in much the same way that a thawing river can be registered alongside an animal decomposing on its shoal. Materials range from the telluric to the ersatz; brass oxidizes, hair sheds, dried vegetation desiccates or decays, acrylic yellows.

In "A Single Origin With Plural Effects" (a title which plays on the writing of Roland Barthes from his essay on plastic) a curved brass rod seems to transform a garland of fish scales into a cascade of un-painted acrylic nails; denoting that the processes of transformation are phenomenal, directional, unrepeatable, and irreversible—but also largely unseen—occurring beyond the reach of human perception because we are not sufficiently patient, sensitive, or immortal enough to bear witness to “the conversion of substance” that happens across geological, biological, and technological time-scales. As a body of work, the sculptures that compose Controlled Substances refuse anchorage in time, slipping from the assurances of physical permanence.

Heather Scott Peterson (b. 1976, Rochester, NY) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a MArch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and a BFA in painting and art history from the Rhode Island School of Design. Peterson is a recipient of a 2014 MacDowell fellowship, and the Juror’s Pick in New American Paintings (2010). Solo exhibitions have included Faltarbete, Oland (2019), and TXST Galleries, San Marco (2018). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Domaine de Boisbuchet, Lessac (2016), WUHO, Los Angeles (2015), MAK Center, Los Angeles (2013), Uncertain, Los Angeles (2013).
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Controlled Substances, Installation View

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Controlled Substances, Installation view, left to right: A Future Forest, A Fine Ash of Sound, A Single Origin with Plural Effects, The Late Work of Callimachus

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A Future Forest, 2018
machined brass, carbonized willow branches
26 x 6 x 72 in (66 x 15.25 x 182.8 cm)

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A Fine Ash of Sound, 2018
machined brass, pussy willow catkins
45 x 10.75 x 25 in (114.3 x 27.3 x 63.5 cm)

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A Single Origin with Plural Effects, 2023
fish scales, acrylic, brass
3.5 x 62 x 1 in (8.9 x 157.5 x 2.5 cm)

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Controlled Substances, Installation View , left to right: A Single Origin with Plural Effects, The Late Work of Callimachus

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The Late Work of Callimachus, 2015
brass, shelf fungi
5 x 5 x 80 in (12.7 x 12.7 x 203.2 cm)

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Controlled Substances, Installation View, left to right: A Fine Ash of Sound, Where An Ocean Will Be, Neither A Palace nor A Shore, Integument

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Integument, 2016
machined brass, mohair
12 x 12 x 4 in (40.6 x 40.6 x 15.24 cm)

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Where An Ocean Will Be, 2018
machined brass
12 x 3 x 48 in (30.5 x 7.6 x 121.9 cm)

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Neither A Palace nor A Shore, 2015
machined and cast brass
42 x 78 x .5 in (106.7 x 198 x 1.27 cm)

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Neither A Palace nor A Shore, 2015
machined and cast brass
42 x 78 x .5 in (106.7 x 198 x 1.27 cm)

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Controlled Substances, Installation View, left to right: Where An Ocean Will Be, Neither A Palace nor A Shore, What A Map Will Not Admit

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Controlled Substances, Installation View, left to right: What A Map Will Not Admit, Intercesseur

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Intercesseur, 2015
machined brass, horse hair, silk
28.5 x 79 x .5 in (72.4 x 200.6 x 1.27 cm)