Peter Alexander

de Thomas Zander

Peter Alexander recorded his visual experience of the Californian zeitgeist in his Polaroids between 1972 and the early 1990s. In 2020 he arranged the previously unpublished images in pairs. Alexander was a pioneer of the Light and Space movement that emerged as an important, innovative, and distinctly West Coast approach to art. He is most renowned for his sculptural forms made from cast resin. Their luminous transparency evokes both the purity and arti?ciality of California?s light and colors. ?It may come as a surprise that an artist so well known and admired for minimal and pure sculptures has also made Polaroid photographs of what seems like a maximally impure world.? The accompanying essay reveals fascinating connections between the two.