Peter Coffin was born in 1972, In Berkeley, California. He lives and works in New York. He graduated from the University of California, in 1995 and concluded his Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in 2000.

His practice integrates various media such as photography, performance, video, sound and sculpture, and he uses art history, strange facts, mystical and psychoanalytic theories as informative matter to disarrange the established modes of perception and interpretation, and their regulating codes. From this strategy result installations, as ironic as delirious and complex, like the construction of an UFO flying over the Baltic sea and the Brazilian coast, an industrial mobile structure that transports balloons or a serenade for plants.

Coffin exhibits his work since the end of 1990. Some of his most significant solo exhibitions are ÉTAS (faits-le vous-même) / Grow Your Own, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2007; Yellow Outline, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Friburg, 2008; Peter Coffin, The Curve Gallery, Barbican Art Centre, London, 2009; The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers: 2.8 Peter Coffin, CCA Wattis Institute for the Arts, San Francisco, 2009; Petter Coffin, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, 2009; Here & There, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, 2013 and Long Shadows, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, 2019. The group exhibitions include the Moscow Biennale, Lenin Museum, Moscow, 2007; Altermodern, Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London, 2009; Filling the Void, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010; Dystopia, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 2011; TRANSMISSION LA, The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles, 2012; Infinite Jest, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2014 and Les enfants de Saturne, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute Vienne – Château de Rochechouart, 2019. He presented performances at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2000; Performa 05, New York, 2005 and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, 2009. His work is represented in various collections such as the MoMa, New York; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen and Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, among others.

SN, November 2020

David Claerbout

Artworks

Wildfire (Meditation on Fire)2019-2020

José Manuel Ciria

Peter Coffin