Peter Campus's 1987 stone projections at Cristin Tierney explore vision and time

Peter Campus, a video art pioneer influenced by Yvonne Rainer, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman, presents five large-scale projections of stones from 1987 at Cristin Tierney in New York from 19 January to 4 March. These works, including pieces titled 'schism' and 'half-life', are displayed in a dimly lit room divided by a half wall, creating a maze-like environment where rocks float on infinite black fields. Campus, who showed at Bykert Gallery and Paula Cooper before withdrawing in 1979, began this series around 1987, unifying his earlier video installations and photographic practices. The projections transform surface details into abstract patterns, with blacks and greys indicating material reflectivity, emphasizing light over object. Viewing becomes a spatial experience that compresses geologic time, photographic moments, and transitory presentation. In a 1976 interview, Campus described human existence as 'a ash of light in the void', echoing the poetic resonance of these works, which implicate vision as contingent and abstract.