In the life of rural America, rocky outcrops include the possibility of a hole.
Peter Sutherland is drawn to places that are filler on the country’s psychic map, places where time lags between meals, and nothing in particular looms on the horizon. What drew him to the hole above was not the possibility of a bear within but the youth without. They decorated the edge of the dark as a homage.
Boredom interests him. Sutherland makes art of odd games, twists of light, lying around. Ordinary burdens and accidental beauties pause for him to take their picture. About his exhibit last year at the ATM Gallery, Blame It On The Dog, Roberta Smith wrote:
Mr. Sutherland is something of a multitasker. In addition to writing
rather well (in the show’s small catalog), he is also a filmmaker.
Whatever he does seems to celebrate the potential for inspiration in
even the most pedestrian and barren facts of American life. Every
instant is a possible image; every image a likely story.
The last image, of the artist balancing a knife on his palm, is a still from a video. It’s the first thing you see upon entering Lawrimore Project. If you’re not planning to enter Lawrimore Project, you can see the video online by going to Sutherland’s Website, here, and clicking the last word of his essay, which is joy.
Through June 26.
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