An immersive exhibition, Peter Campus – Video ergo sum, on view at Jeu de Paume, Paris until May 28, 2017 is the first solo exhibition dedicated to American artist Peter Campus (born 1937, New York), one of the most influential pioneers of video art whose seminal work has inspired generations of artists.
The first part of the Jeu de Paume exhibition is focused on the experimental video installations created by Peter Campus. He explores the notions of spatial awareness, one’s perception of self and body, and their impact on the construction of identity. In these video installations that are amazingly surreal and strangely unsettling, Campus uses closed circuits, unusual perspectives and multiple timeframes, to transmit the electronic images of the viewer on screen. The result is a strange confrontation with self, as the viewers find themselves displaced in time or space, or both. Peter Campus also explores the psychological and cognitive dimension of projected images in a series of videos that seem as surreal as a Magritte painting.
© Peter Campus 2017.
The second part of the exhibition explores the artist’s work from the 1980s onwards. After he temporarily abandoned video art and started photographing. A series of black and white photographs are presented, followed by the more recent video productions where he uses high definition digital videos, separated pixel by pixel, to create pictorial work. In other video installations, the human body is no longer the primary focus of experimentation. While the performative dimension persists, the focus shifts to landscapes, seascapes and other objects affected by time, nature and human activity.
Peter Campus – video ergo sum is on view at Jeu de Paume, Paris until May 28, 2017.
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