Events

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Peter Hopkins (born 1955) creates “sensory” paintings, his recent works employing perfume and high-contrast fluorescent dots, where the site remains inside the work of art. It is an affected arena wherein the industrial event occurs. He is heavily influenced by Robert Smithson, who defined “site” as a physical place characterized by open limits and scattered information. The “nonsite” is defined as the place of closed limits and contained information. But whereas Smithson requested that the viewers of his nonsites convert their information into the real thing by traveling to his sites, Hopkins makes the site itself the work of art, bringing it indoors. In a sense, Hopkins inverts Smithson’s definitions. For Hopkins, the site is the work of art within the gallery; the nonsite is the world that generated the site, but it remains uncodifiable and ultimately elusive to the gallery viewer.

Hopkins received a BFA from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin.