Ben Peterson
Monday, 3 August 2009
The Pilgrim’s Progress is a series of drawings by Ben Peterson depicting an imagined collision between two types of themed communities; a golf course retirement development and a historical reenactment theme park. Using the form of fragmented follie-type structures, Peterson attempts to collapse the distinction between authenticity and artifice, entertainment and education. Peterson’s depicted landscapes are loaded with manicured putting greens, golf bags, historical museum displays, large trees, and the ghosts of pilgrims who bear witness to the collision of Colonial forts, gated developments, golf carts, and shipwrecks. In the work, Peterson’s structures create a new space where history, both of the winners and the losers, contaminates the present, giving rise to a hybrid stage that is neither completed nor abandoned.