Piece description from the artist
From the series Painted Black.
The Tubbs fire in 2015 was a devastating wildfire that the artist Peter Ivanoff experienced first hand. After touring the devastation, the artist became profoundly influenced by the new blackened local landscape. In reaction and to perhaps gain a sense of control, Ivanoff streamlined his approach to creating art by simplifying his materials and methods deciding to work only with the technique of collage with India ink. From this point on for the next few years black seeped steadily into the artist’s work. Evident with-in the blackness, however are a variety of subtle shifts in tone, texture and surface. The collages in the Painted Black series are created with applications of washes of India ink with a mastery of the medium that is only possible to fully appreciate in the original works.
FL, Festina Lente (Latin for make haste slowly) is a name re-cycled from an early Ivanoff found object sculpture involving plumbing pipes, 3 wheels, one raised like a hoof, a chariot-like carriage and a fixed spiral tail from a bent wood chair.
In the collage FL, a breast like carriage is precariously balanced upon a wheel while the broken end of a crutch, an aid to movement in a number of pieces, is firmly planted blocking its path. Ivanoff is fascinated with crutches as one of many examples of simple
technologies that are linked to our survival but also tools in which we are dependent.
In many of the artist Peter Ivanoff’s hybrids, they, against all logic seem to have a purpose, but we just don’t know what it is. Ivanoff prefers to work by suggestion rather than exact symbolic correlation leaving us to stop and contemplate. Maybe that’s just the point.
Peter Ivanoff spent most of his professional life, initially as an art director in advertising, then as a concept artist and designer
for advertising and marketing. In addition to making a living as a commercial artist,
throughout his career he has maintained a studio practice.
As a architecture student he was introduced to painting by the artist Gilbert Steed, (a color consultant for Bocour paints and a student of Hans Hoffman). He studied and was introduced to European Modernism by the photographer and painter, John Guttman, (a student of Otto Mueller) at SFSU. He also studied Life Drawing and Anatomy at the Art Student's League.
He earned his B.A. from SSU and an M.F.A from MICA (a highlight of which was his association with the late Salvatore Scarpitta). Currently, he lives and works in Palo Alto, CA.
A native of Wales, California-based artist Peter Ivanoff’s sculpture is all about going places. Crutches, ladders, plumbing fixtures, discarded furniture, and wheels deliver the message in his objects and installations. Driving this narrative, Ivanoff’s interest is in
our relationship with technology.
After the recent and ongoing wildfires, political turmoil and other disasters, his recent drawings, collages, and paintings have taken on an environmental and political shift. In these troubled times Ivanoff is presenting a much darker impression of California than for example, the artists David Hockney or Wayne Thiebaud.
Ivanoff’s techniques are purposely simple; collages are black India ink cut-outs
on Bristol and the paintings and works on paper are painted in acrylic.
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