Erik L. Peterson - Oasis: Apparition in Blue Opening Reception

The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Oasis: Apparition in Blue, an interactive installation in our sculpture garden by Erik Peterson, curated by Laura Husar Garcia. Please join us for a reception for the artist on Sunday, September 14th from 3 - 6pm and an Artist Walk and Talk on Saturday, October 11th at 6pm. The exhibition will be on view Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1-5pm through October 18, 2025. Opening Reception: Sunday, September 14, 2025, 3:00 - 6:00 PM Please join us afterwards for a private cocktail hour at the Quincy Street Distillery Exhibition Dates: September 14 - October 18, 2025 Exhibition on view: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1:00 – 5:00 PM Sunset Oasis: An Artist Walk and Talk with Erik L. Peterson and Laura Husar Garcia: Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 6:00 PM Oasis invites viewers into an active encounter with perception, public space, and the open-ended meaning of familiar civic forms. At first glance, it appears to be a monumental blue road sign—familiar, directive, municipal. But step closer, and the light transforms the object’s purpose. Light refracts and halos emerge. The sign shimmers like a mirage, destabilizing its own authority and reshaping the viewer’s relationship to the everyday in a playful way. Through scale, interactivity, and visual distortion Erik L. Peterson reframes a utilitarian artifact into an object of wonder, reflection, and civic interruption. Oasis engages the language of infrastructure and turns it inside out, offering a temporary rupture in the logic of the urban landscape. It is both sculpture and social mirror—a poetic disruption that asks us to slow down, look again, and consider the subtle contradictions embedded in our built environments. In the lineage of artists who reconfigure the ordinary to illuminate the uncanny, this work reveals the latent theatricality of civic life. Here, signage becomes stagecraft, and the public becomes performer. Oasis resists easy interpretation. It points nowhere—and everywhere—reminding us that meaning, like light, often arrives obliquely. – Laura Husar Garcia, curator ..... Erik L. Peterson is a Chicago public artist, nature playground designer-builder, and educator. He is known for his large-scale urban interventions and neon installations (The Oasis, Inner State, and Seep), reclaimed wood public benches and nature playgrounds (Ashland, Two Sanctuaries, and the Nature Park at We Grow Chicago), signature edible ice cream sculptures (CreamCycle and Soft Palate), and public performances camouflaged within urban spaces (Checks & Balances, Two Tow’n, and Square Dance). Additionally, Peterson is a founder of Hyde Park Kunstverein, a community museum that operated out of SHoP in 2010-12 and Qeej Hero, a cross-cultural video game starring a Hmong wind instrument called the qeej. Peterson has a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago. Peterson spent time at ACRE, then as a Bolt Resident in 2012 and later an Artist Mentor alongside Hương Ngô for the Field/Work program at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition. Peterson now serves on CAC’s Board of Directors. Recent shows include Waterways at the Schingoethe Center at Aurora University and an installation of Two Sanctuaries on the Wild Mile, a floating eco park on the Chicago River. Peterson is currently working on two large-scale public art commissions–Pop Art (Bubble) and Golden Truth–for an arts corridor on Lawrence Avenue in Uptown. He is spending the summer working with two teen groups, building a community garden in Bronzeville and creating a large-scale ascending cedar spiral for the backyard of 6018 NORTH. http://www.eriklpeterson.com ..... Laura Husar Garcia is an artist, curator, and creative director. Her photography has been exhibited widely, including The Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography in Prague, Fotofever at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, The Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography in Barcelona, The Polish Museum of America in Chicago, Fotofest Biennial in Houston, Photo Independent in Los Angeles, The Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago, The Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston and Schingoethe Center Museum in Aurora. Grants and awards include The Illinois Humanities Council, International Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Award and Photolucida Critical Mass top 200 finalist. Garcia is currently exhibiting her work at Alma Gallery in Chicago. Her photographs have been published in several books, as well as The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, Newsweek, Slate Magazine, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, and more. Garcia is a member of RAC’s Exhibition Committee, an Advisory Board Member of Fresh Lens Chicago, and Creative Director and Co-Founder of Three Story Media, which produces visual media through non-fiction storytelling. https://www.husargarcia.com

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