peter campus: pause

Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to present peter campus: pause. This exhibition of new video works is the next in the gallery's annual black box programming that highlights the moving image. pause opens on Thursday, January 11th with a reception from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, and closes on Saturday, February 17th. The artist will be present at the opening reception.

In pause, new video works present images of life in harbor and seaside areas around eastern Long Island, Massachusetts, and the Atlantic coast of France. A two-screen work, ebb and flow, was made in Montauk harbor, Shinnecock inlet, and the famous New Bedford harbor. The dual projections portray fishing boats moored to docks or churning through water, creating powerful juxtapositions of form, perspective, and color. At times the images seem nearly mirrored, but small differences reveal themselves upon close observation. A boat turning is seen simultaneously from the side and from behind; a bird faces one direction on one screen, the opposite direction on the other; the same boat is pictured at different stages of loading, unloading, and docking. Between each sequence, the screen cuts to a “pause”—imageless blackness.

The video at rest similarly presents a sequence of images interspersed with black; its source imagery, however, is the waterways of Pornic, France. In this single-channel work, campus captures the harbor through long, meditative views of boats anchored in the water as well as visitors walking around beachside paths, or crossing the boat-strewn seabed at low tide. Like ebb and flow, at rest approaches a form of realism. campus’ use of 4K technology gives the works hyperrealistic definition, but the overall effect is visually idiosyncratic. Actions are slowed, whether they are those of a boy climbing up a ladder or a trawler slicing across the harbor. Colors are heightened to an expressive degree. As a result, the viewer is reminded that video does not simply present a one-to-one picture of the world. Such works are the sum of choices made by the artist: what to reveal, how to frame an image, and how to portray a subject.

In pause, campus delivers a representation of the sublime as embodied by the sea. The works’ stillness invites us to slow down, while the darkened black box installation provides a space to contemplate our relationship to the natural environment. Like his videographs from the recent past, the works in the exhibition continue the artist’s decades-long exploration of the link between identity and the landscape, but they also introduce a new element: the presence of the individual. Small figures punctuate vast landscapes; workers and fisherman staff boats; and there is a pronounced attention given to the coastline and the communities that surround and survive off the sea. Even when boats are shown without figures, the human presence is implied; campus presents the vessels in close-up views so that the viewer feels like part of the composition. This shift represents a further development in the artist’s pursuit of harmony between man and nature—a congruence that he achieves through precise technical manipulation, underscoring his place at the vanguard of the video medium.

The footage recorded in Pornic for at rest was filmed while the artist was working on a commission for his survey exhibition that originated at the Jeu de Paume, video ergo sum. This exhibition, which presents campus’ work from 1971 to the present, is currently on view at the CAAC in Seville, Spain. In 2018, video ergo sum will travel to Fundação Caixa Geral de Depósitos – Culturgest in Lisbon, Portugal, before heading to the Bronx Museum in New York in the spring of 2019. The exhibition is curated by Anne-Marie Duguet.

For more information please contact Candace Moeller at candace@cristintierney.com or +1.212.594.0550.