Simon Periton
- Artist Statement
- Curator Statement
- zingmagazine project
- Website
Artist Statement
One reading of the work could begin from the idea that I wanted to create something decorative, invest it with a lot of time and effort, and end up with something beautiful, yet essentially worthless—something that is usually discarded. A doily can do all that for me. In this sense, there are many other things in the world that are doilies too, but they just don’t look like them.
Curator Statement
British artist Simon Periton’s cut outs follow a long tradition of paper and cut outs, which point to a range of references—from Matisse, to origami, to crafting and snowflake making, and share the contemporary stage with other emerging paper cutting artists. His work in the Dikeou Collection consists of three barbed wire cut outs number I, III and IV, in target arrangements, and his infamous Radiant Anarchy Doily which appeared on the cover of Frieze. The circular formats recall Jasper Johns’ use of the target. Periton’s employment of foil, barbs, and the “A” for Anarchy cleverly attacks the idea Johns addressed: formal space and color in terms of literal recognition (of the target as recognizable icon) and formal resolutions of space and color as one sees them. Periton’s iconographic use of Pop imagery, one that bespeaks a certain youth and culture, fuses image and space, whereas Johns meant to defuse it through the use of images that provoked no meaning.
