Joshua Petker - Here Comes the Waiting for the Sun

Joshua Petker - Here Comes the Waiting for the Sun

Opening reception is February 11, 2017 6-9 pm
Exhibition runs until March 5th

Monte Vista Projects is proud to present Here Comes the Waiting for the Sun, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Joshua Petker. The works in Here Comes the Waiting for the Sun are a continuation of Petker’s tussle between waywardness and structure in popular enlightenment. Floral bouquets of retro-patterned flowers blend a mixture of ephemerality and aesthetics. Amid them is a reference to the use of botanical imagery in painting: a tradition of portraying objects from the natural world with a purpose that is twofold. Depicted amongst the flowers are an infusion of the decorative European fashion that followed the Thirty Years’ War and the bohemian youth of the 1960s. Both periods were characterized by rapid change and inspired by moments of peaceful and relaxed living. In one painting, a hippie in flower dress stares East towards the rising Sun. The hippie’s gaze sets a trance-like mode of viewing that is useful for accessing Petker’s paintings. From such a state of looking, Here Comes the Waiting for the Sun considers generative possibilities of how relationships between history and patterning repeat themselves.

Joshua Petker lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including, Some Hippies and A Hobo at ASHES/ASHES, Los Angeles, CA (2015), Incognito at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA (2014), and About Face at ACME. Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2012). Petker received his BA from The Evergreen State College and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2015.