JJ PEET. MAGICSTANCE

About

Each work contains an arrangement of found and built elements – objects and images that often cite global and political incidents, each sculpture assembled with acute sensibility to the formal qualities inherent to its distinctive materials.

Although sculptural, PEET’s Stilifes relate to still-life painterly traditions, and the genre’s use of commonplace objects to depict broader allegorical commentary on everyday human experience specific to a time and place. PEET’s work – whether painting, ceramic, drawing, or more performative acts, such as The TV Show live broadcasts or Barter_Station – always engages with the world in a direct and active way. PEET takes on a form of guerilla journalism – gathering information and evidence of the socio-political climate that is contemplated and reassembled in the studio – in an attempt to make sense of the chaotic and violent experiences of individuals on our planet.

PEET’s long held interest in ceramics is evident in Stilifes. He continues his exploration of ceramics as a medium that can interface easily with other materials, offering the most basic and malleable method to generate objects, aptly described by PEET’s manifesto “From brain to hand to object.” Furthermore, clay contains an indexical imprint of the artist’s hand and movement, a direct “proxy” for the artist’s energy and intentions, physically and metaphorically binding the various elements of a Stilife together. PEET reimagines handheld devices, the type that function as continuation of self, such as phones and cameras, into a cache of tools in porcelain and stoneware – Burner phones, Viewers, Proxy Cups, Filters – that feature prominently in PEET’s Stilifes.

MAGiCSTANCE refers to the idea that when a viewer is alert, aware, and attuned to a greater consciousness, unexpected connections and coincidences are more likely. Active observations can inform us, and offer an alternative to a more passive filtering of general news feeds and recycled information. Stilife sculptures are arranged to generate meaning in the moment of time we are in, prompting – for artist and viewer alike – a slower and more concerted mode of looking. PEET offers a diagrammatic definition ofMAGiCSTANCE:

The exhibition also includes a forthcoming artist book, The Stilife Guide to Viewing_, the sixth in a series self-published by PEET in the past year, each operating like a guide to PEET’s layered modes of working and the complex relationships between his various bodies of work.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX (2015); Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013); On Stellar Rays, New York, NY (2012, 2010, 2009); Gallery Diet, Miami, FL (2013, 2010). Recent group exhibitions include Satan Ceramics, Salon 94, New York, NY (2014) and Public Art Fund, New York, NY (2011). These exhibitions received numerous reviews, in publications such as Art in America, Artforum, ArtPulse, Art Review, Bomb, Frieze, The Last Magazine, Modern Painters, The New Yorker and TimeOut NY. JJ PEET received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2006 and his BFA from the University of Minnesota in 1999. He currently teaches ceramics at Columbia University and the 92nd Street Y in New York.