Peter Happel Christian

Weights & Measures
2006-ongoing



 
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Weights & Measures is a non-linear exploration of social relationships with the natural world. Like a pendulum, our disconnect from nature swings from points of certainty to points of ambiguity on a daily basis. In this project, I regularly stage objects or situations to investigate notions of scenery, wilderness, and the still-life. Through these observations and interventions, I work to reveal, fictionalize and question "nature" as a geographic locale, as a romantic ideal, and as a socio-political construct. As much as I am inspired by phenomena of the natural world and find great value in being outside, I focus on the observation that our everyday relationship with nature is predominantly one of mediation, physical distance and cognizant remove.

A constant in this work is my exploration of the ways in which a photograph can be extended beyond a flat surface and mutate between different modes of cultural connotation. I consciously blend color and black and white photographs of various sizes with other media to reflect my process of questioning how empiricism, mediation and cognition combine to define a person’s experiences in the world. In this work, I am interested in qualifying my varied experiences in the natural environment as a set of relations between disparate cognitive and sensory events–where my perceptions eclipse the ground under my feet.


Materials: digital chromogenic prints, objects, video, performance and installation. Print sizes range from 10"x10" to 24"x30" depending on the image.


Recent Works
....................................Brief Notes on Existence
....................................Contact (T.A.R.P.S.)
....................................Dead Reckoning
....................................Familiar Ground / Front Yard Topography
.................. NEW! .....Near the Point of Beginning
....................................Some Bodies
....................................Up Down
.............................. NEW! ....Weights & Measures