Peat's Sake

Many artists take a tiny idea, or no idea at all, and blow it up with the most complicated and yet imprecise expression they can muster. Peat Duggins's current installation at the Fresh Up Club is the exact opposite of this trend. It's fresh, perceptive and packed with ideas that still mean something outside the gallery context.

The work is essentially a work of narrative fiction in which an architect has designed a cookie-cutter subdivision, developed it, witnessed an air battle overhead and sold the movie rights to the whole affair. We see the architect's desk in one corner and the rest of the space is devoted to the subdivision (in miniature) laid out with roads, driveways, monopoly-style houses and lots of cars. The blimps and planes are suspended above.

It's all precision-fabricated with cardboard, speaking to the kind of pre-fab disposability of this neighborhood. The cars are strewn around chaotically--and there are clearly too many for the number of houses--but they all look alike. Peat avoids that hackneyed "suburbia is creepy" treatment you see a lot by keeping the focus on the architecture and the neighborhood planning aspect. If the people living here are creepy its only because of the inhumane conditions they live under. Salomón Huerta's house paintings do something similar, as opposed to, say, the film American Beauty, which is all about creepy people. (right, Salomon Huerta)

Anyway, it's worth a trip out to FUC.

thanx for showing Peat's work. Do you have more images? I would love to see them because I'm so far away. Tell him, from what I can see here, it looks so great!

Thanx for keeping us aware of what is happening in Austin.

Have you seen how it was used in the video for a Grupo Fantasma song?