Peter Campus's 'Calling for Shantih' exhibition explores digital perception through layered video works

Peter Campus presented seven new video works in his exhibition 'Calling for Shantih' at Cristin Tierney gallery from October 28 to December 18, 2010. Located at 546 West 29th Street in New York City, the show featured videos displayed on flat screen TVs focusing on utilitarian scenes near the artist's Long Island home, including boats, a power station, and a barn. Campus employs digital editing techniques to break down footage into shifting rectangular blocks that resemble overlapping brushstrokes, creating dense, saturated color mosaics. These pixelated grids recall both Seurat's pointillist paintings and Mondrian's early geometric studies. The videos incorporate ambient sounds and explore themes of time perception, with works like 'Cable Station at Orient Point' and 'Fishing Boats at Shinnecock Bay' showing architectural subjects transformed through layered abstraction. Campus's approach extends modernist photographic traditions established by Alfred Stieglitz, pushing technology beyond mere representation to heighten visual engagement. The artist's concept of 'durational perception'—developed in his 1970s installations—finds new expression through digital editing that allows him to slow down and re-orchestrate observation periods. While the works create meditative calm through extended shots of everyday subjects, they simultaneously dislodge conventional viewing experiences through their abstracted, breathing quality.