In the Future We’ll All Be Fun by Alex M. Petersen

Alex M. Petersen’s solo exhibition, In the Future We’ll All Be Fun, uses graphite drawings and acrylic paintings to speculate on how social media, virtual reality, and biohacking are changing the way we culturally identify. Alex focuses on post-humanism, emergent technologies, and how these
movements affect sex and gender.

His content deals primarily on queer representation and identity through the lens of eroticized figuration, speculative technology, and culturally codified coloration and pattern. Petersen’s work translates line and color to large scale representational, mural-style, installations that can easily co-exist with, yet subvert, traditional notions of fine art presentation. In Alex’s words, “aesthetically engaging, and when successful, sexy af”.

In the Future We’ll All Be Fun, employs Alex’s current repertoire of imagery: flora and fauna regionally specific to the upper Midwest, portraiture of Queer identifying individuals, and consumer waste. All to create a vivid landscape of a trans-disciplinary intersection of subject matter for the viewer to contemplate. Above all, his work is about elevating the awareness of the social rights of marginalized identities, about environmental protection, and the devastating effects of emergent technologies. The work relies heavily on speculation, utilizing conjecture to fabricate fictional realities situated in very real, contemporary issues. Through drawing and painting, he engages and educates viewers, directing questions towards identity and technology, and where those trends are currently leading our society.

Alex M. Petersen currently lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. He recently graduated with a MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2017 where he received a Hasselmo Fellowship. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions in Portland, OR; Berkley, CA; and Minneapolis, MN. In 2016 he participated in a summer research and residency program at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, Scotland.