BOOM TOWN by Peter Burr

Peter Burr’s BOOM TOWN is a fictional neighborhood on the blockchain inspired by towns that live and die with the boom and bust cycles of speculation. Like most of Burr’s works, BOOM TOWN is a richly crafted narrative world that is deeply evocative while remaining mysterious and restrained. Displaying the artist’s gift for creating images and environments that hover on the boundary between abstraction and figuration, they invite the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own interpretation, suggesting a story that is barely legible yet unmistakably present. Inspired by the tools and aesthetics of video games, Burr’s compositions draw on generative dynamics and the complexity that emerges from simple, rule-based systems. Each of the eight works in BOOM TOWN follows a precise logic for generating the structure’s architecture, its ground and field, its shadows, planes, and colors. The resulting images are reminiscent of 8-bit video games and early computer graphics, as well as the flat diagrammatic quality of CAD architectural drawings. — Julia Kaganskiy