Cleon Peterson is an LA-based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings depict the struggle between power and submission in the fluctuating architecture of contemporary society.
Born in Seattle, WA, in 1973, Peterson received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, MI, and his BFA in Graphic Design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Peterson’s work has been included in major exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; at the Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse; and at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He has had solo exhibitions at Albertz Benda, New York, Over the Influence, Los Angeles; Agnès b.’s Galerie du Jour, Paris; Pilevneli, Istanbul; and PLUS-ONE, Antwerp. His category-defying work has illustrated features in the New York Times, fiction by George Saunders in the New Yorker, and Penguin Classics’ edition of Philip K. Dick’s ‘Man in the High Castle’. In 2020 he released a series of instrumental political posters disseminated through his website.