PETER DAYTON: DARK GARDEN

Site Specific Installation. Peter Dayton, 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘎𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯, 2024. Ink on premium vinyl with low-luster laminate and collage overlay. Photo: Gary Mamay
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Peter Dayton
Dark Garden, 2024
Ink on premium vinyl with
low-luster laminate and collage overlay

After a nearly decade-long career as a punk rock musician, Peter Dayton returned to visual art upon moving to East Hampton in the mid-1980s. Dark Garden is a site-specific installation created for Guild Hall’s stairwell leading from the lobby to the balcony of the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater. Dayton’s exploration of flowers began when he found discarded issues of House and Garden magazine from the 1950s near his home, and his collages utilize photocopied flowers from seed catalogs, which links his practice to the work of Andy Warhol and other pop artists. He chooses visually arresting images of flowers without leaves and stems—images devoid of sentiment, emotion, or specific references—allowing the flower forms to create their own patterns.

  • Peter Dayton

    Peter Dayton (b. 1955, New York) attended art schools in Europe in the 1970s and graduated in 1979 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he studied visual, video, and performance art. Initially he pursued music as an art project, then became a professional musician, first in the punk rock band Le Peste, then under his own name until 1986. He turned his attention back to visual art in 1988. Dayton’s work often references various art historical movements and concepts such as minimalism, pop art, abstract expressionism, and feminism. He simultaneously explores and critiques commodity culture and art historical movements through varied materials, techniques, and presentations.

    Dayton has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally, internationally, and extensively on the East End of Long Island. He has produced numerous site-specific installations and commissions for Louis Vuitton, Chanel, the Peter Marino Art Foundation, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to name a few. This is his first project for Guild Hall. 

    Dayton lives and works in East Hampton, New York.

    peterdayton.com

     

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Visual Arts programs are supported by funding from The Michael Lynne Museum Endowment and The Melville Straus Family Endowment.  
 
Additional support provided by Friends of the Museum: Sara Amani and Timothy Ward, Danielle Anderman, Shari and Jeff Aronson, The Artist Profile Archive, Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann, Cara and John Fry, Susan Lacy, Robert Longo and Sophie Chahinian, Onna House, Lisa and Richard Perry, Laurie and Martin Scheinman, Jeff and Audrey Spiegel, Hillary and Jeff Suchman, Barbara Tober, Jane Wesman and Don Savelson, and Neda Young
 
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