While photography is normally tasked with “capturing” its subject, the images in the photographically derived paintings in “Pardon Our Disappearance, Part One” seem to perpetually “come and go.” Painted on the reverse of raw cotton, the front side of the canvas appears blank. While a closer look gradually reveals a face, the residual image resists a fixed definition.

Conveying the relationship between aspiration and societal standards of beauty, these portraits of “makeovers” and “look-a-likes” employ a perceptual ambiguity which slows down the process of looking, removing some of the intentionality of the original images as they’re rendered more speculative.

In the second part of the exhibition, at Sometimes (works of art), the makeover process is considered in the context of urbanism, with photographs that reveal the significance of lifestyle culture in the reshaping of both the perception and reality of the built environment.

Peter Scott is an artist, writer, curator, and director of the non-profit gallery carriage trade. His work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe, including one-person exhibitions in the U.S., U.K., Holland, France, and Belgium. His writing has appeared in Artscribe, ArtUS, Zing Magazine, artnet, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Art Monthly as well as several exhibition catalogues. His projects have been featured in various publications including Artscribe, artforum.com, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, ArtCards, and artnet magazine.