Like a punch to the stomach: street artist Cleon Peterson presents his vision of a violent world

It’s hard not to draw links between the work of US street artist Cleon Peterson and Hong Kong’s political landscape. His imposing, mostly monochrome images of clashing figures struggling for power, dripping with themes of police brutality, domination and submission, seem to have been custom-made for the city.

But while he recognises the local comparisons, Peterson says his message is a much more sombre: his violent images have no geographical borders but apply to every region of the world.

“It would be easy to say these images reflect politics in Hong Kong right now, but the themes I depict are not just what’s happening in this city – it’s what’s happening globally,” says the Seattle-born, LA-based artist.

Peterson visited Hong Kong this month for his show “Purity”, a pop-up featuring 20 large-scale acrylic-on-canvas pieces, each raging with violence and brutality. It’s the artist’s second show in the city and the first exhibition managed by Over The Influence, a new Hong Kong organisation focusing on radical and influential contemporary international artists. The show at The Space ends on January 31.

On the day we meet, just before his show’s opening, Peterson is unveiling something else: a huge work on Hollywood Road, his latest fingerprint on the city’s streetscape (he has similar works on lanes off Hollywood Road). An imposing five metres by five metres, the image on Wa Lane on the Sheung Wan end of Hollywood Road, came about thanks to a new initiative by French restaurant La Cantoche, also on Wa Lane, that will make the space available to artists.

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And the wall got an impressive debut. The image shows huge forms intertwined in a violent battle, painted in Peterson’s signature black and white (he occasionally dabbles in angry red). It’s his ability to project such powerful imagery and complex messages using so few colours that has helped him stand out from the crowd. “I call these guys the shadows,” he says taking a step back. “It kind of represents the dark side of all of us.”