Artists Space

U.S.. Projects: Peter Shelton

December 11, 1982 – January 15, 1983

A large square edifice with an opening in its center bottom held up off the floor with numerous steel rods on its sides in a gallery setting. A shadow of a human figure appears/disappears in front of the work.
U.S. Projects: Peter Shelton. Installation view, Artists Space, 1982. [A large square edifice with an opening in its center bottom held up off the floor with numerous steel rods on its sides in a gallery setting. A shadow of a human figure appears/disappears in front of the work.]

Peter Shelton's installation takes its form from the actual gallery space in which it is being exhibited. "Whitehead" consists of a reduced version of the gallery space fabricated from 4,000 pounds of plaster which is elevated five feet off the ground by steel rods. This compact representation of the gallery room has been cast in place and has an opening at the bottom so that the viewer is able to enter the sculpture and put his/her head into the "Whitehead". This distillation of the gallery space has the potential to contain the viewer, though in a radically different way than the actual gallery, due not only to its size and density, but also to its "improbable elevation". This monolithic structure becomes a representation of the space in which it is being exhibited and at the same time, examines the viewer's relationship to both the structure and the space. Shelton's play with these diverse elements in "Whitehead" results in both physical and theoretical dislocations which are strongly rooted in measurements derived from the human figure.

Peter Shelton lives in Los Angeles, California and teaches at Otis Art Institute. He has exhibited recently recently in Los Angeles at the Melinda Wyatt Gallery and at the Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, and at Artpark, Lewiston, New York; the Open Space Gallery, Victoria, B.C. and the Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara.

U.S. Projects is a series of ten individual installations. Ten art professionals around the country have each selected on artists from their region. The U.S. Projects series has been funded by the Museums Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

U.S. Projects: Peter Shelton Press Release

The U.S. PROJECTS series has been funded by the Museums Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artists Space regular exhibition program is sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute of Museum Services, the Jerome Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Samuel Rubin Foundation and the Lauder Foundation. Corporate Sponsors are AT&T Long Lines, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, Consolidated Edison, Exxon Corporation, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, I.M. Pei & Partners, Philip Morris and Warner Communications.