"You Build It, We Burn It"

REVIEW By establishing an even balance of familiar tropes from the two distinct camps that operate at opposite ends of the built environment — developers and environmental activists — Alameda-based artist Ben Peterson demonstrates how this contestation over space is an interdependent relationship in his exhibit "You Build It, We Burn It." The peculiar sites Peterson proposes, all of which are meticulously rendered in ink and graphite on a field of white space, are simultaneously under construction and in the process of being deconstructed. Every element in Peterson's landscapes is completely fabricated — even the trees look as if they had been manufactured on an assembly line and are stuck in planter pots instead of in the ground. There is nothing natural (in the nostalgic, romantic sense of the word) about those things that we traditionally think of as nature. So what is nature anymore? Now? Peterson shows us just how strange our interaction with the landscape has become, that it is manifold, and that and each intervention is inextricably linked to the next: containment, construction, consumption, contestation, and so on, ad infinitum. In T.R., a yellow and red Igloo watercooler and red plastic cups litter the ground, where protest signs lean against police barricades that enclose the exterior of an electronics storefront with its windows smashed out. Vigil candles dot the squares of grass rolled out in front of the window, and televisions — all bunched together with their screens smashed out as well — stare out at the landscape. It's as if the TVs could choose freedom from the store's confines but don't quite know what that means. An extension cord plugged into a power strip trails off from the scene of the crime. What exactly it's connected to is anybody's guess. (Katie Kurtz)

YOU BUILD IT, WE BURN IT Through April 9. Sun., noon–5 p.m. and by appt.

Ratio 3 Gallery, 903 Guerrero, SF. (415) 821-3371, www.ratio3.org