Ian Pedigo
Ian Pedigo (born in 1973 in Anchorage, Alaska), is a sculptor, image and installation-based artist and writer living and working in New York, NY (Queens). His artwork involves merging natural materials with the synthetic, as well as the experience of material and image-based aesthetics as acts of discovery, creation, and recovery. His works can be perceived as premeditated artifacts of an archaeological nature, found within the context of the near-present while appearing as discrete aesthetic objects in their own right. He classifies his work as dealing with a "modal environs", referring to an art produced within an aesthetics-based ecology similar to the Vibrant Matter and Ecology of Matter of Jane Bennett (political theorist). He received his Master of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin with concentrations in installation, sculpture, and communications. He also participated in the 2001 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Art, studying with Ilya Kabakov & Emilia Kabakov and the theorist/critic Boris Groys. His first solo show in New York took place at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in 2006, earning critical attention for his unorthodox formal recombinations of found materials. He has subsequently exhibited internationally with solo and group exhibitions at galleries and institutions in