In a site-responsive intervention to the architecture of AAAgent, Ryan Peter presents an installation of black-and-white photograms nested inside the three doorways. The work materializes through cumulation of spray painting, incidental mark making, and traditional darkroom techniques to develop multilayered composites of shapes and forms. The resulting imagery obliquely philosophizes their origin and purpose, a primeval world composed of building blocks of visual and auditory elements. The three totemic runes titled LL, UUU, and Eighth engage in a playful reorientation of letters and sounds, unsettling semiotic resonances.

Peter’s practice oscillates between analog and digital to create postlinguistic tableaus. Digitally sourced, rendered, and altered images undergo a series of generative permutations employing transparent plastic substrates as one-to-one scale negatives. Fingerprints and other indexical traces of the human-made simulate tactile texture of patinated time. Unlike painting or drawing, where the image develops through visible, incremental decisions, Peter’s scenographic compositions remain invisible until the final stage of chemical development—embracing mis-registration, omission, and chance. Peter’s photograms, reminiscent of a trompe l'oeil mise-en-scène, address the transitory purpose of its former life as doorways by extending a participatory view into a liminal space.

Ryan Peter (b. 1978, Nelson; lives and works in Milwaukee) works at the intersection of painting, drawing, and photography. Peter received a BFA and MFA from University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2004, 2008). Peter is currently an instructor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2024) and Republic Gallery, Vancouver (2016, 2014, 2012, 2010). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Equinox Gallery, Vancouver (2020, 2011, 2010); Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco (2019); The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2015); Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto (2014); Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg (2011); and The VERA Project, Seattle (2011). Peter is a recipient of Canada Council for the Arts Grant (2022, 2021, 2017); and British Columbia Arts Council Grant (2017, 2015).

Peter’s work is in the collections of Bank of Montreal Corporate Collection and Vancouver Art Gallery.