Dan Peterman

Dan Peterman is an artist whose work takes off from the ever-relevant issues of recycling, ecology, urban development and social integration. Peterman has studied in Chicago, and when on completing his studies he began looking for a studio, he stumbled upon the Resource Center – a local non-profit recycling centre on 61st Street in an inner city area. He began working for the organization at the same time as setting up a studio in disused warehouse space there. Later he took over the whole building. Since then – barring an interruption caused by a fire in 2001 – he has maintained a commitment to the area both as an artist and as a private individual. Latterly, he has started the Experimental Station at the site, which supports innovative alternative start-ups locally. The challenges in the neighbourhood deliver the practical setting for Peterman’s involvement with pressing global topics: environmental issues, racial/class prejudices and urban development. In an early work from the late 1980s, he covered a decrepit old VW minibus with compost, the heat generated by the compost process keeping the bus heated for the local homeless in winter (Chicago Compost Shelter, 1988). Using recycled plastic he has created dance floors (Chicago Ground Cover, 1997) and a thirty-metre long picnic table for a public park (Running Table, 1997) – items that showcase the inherent properties of plastic, a material that transforms and mutates, morphing domestic refuse into new objects for community use and enjoyment, and contributing to debates about the role of sculpture in the public realm.
For all their political correctness, Peterman’s works bespeak a down-to-earthness that aims at concrete solutions and ecological practices that relate to our physical impact on the environment. (PKE)

Dan Peterman, født 1960, USA