Peter Dellert’s recent opus of work explores the dichotomies of surface-interior, figure-ground, present-past, and the natural-manufactured through an array of assemblages and collages. Dellert’s work cleverly juxtaposes these polarities and inverts their meaning in constructions that are aesthetically delicate, subtle and austere, as well as conceptually compelling.
An example of Dellert’s method is the collage “Three Discs” which uses a rusted oil-drum lid as a canvas for a palette of surgically cut and variously colored leaf squares. This weathered ragged metal lid retains two perfect circular holes on the north and south of its surface where oil had entered and exited. In between these precisely cut holes, Dellert places a perfect circle composed of a matrix of the cut quarter-inch squares made of desiccated leaves ranging in color from maroon, through magenta, to flesh tones.
The work displays the interplay of two actors, nature and human. We see the human actor reshaping nature into classical geometric shapes, while nature acts on the man-made object with its slow decaying process of oxidation. There is a steady and determined intentionality in these actions, human and nature that co-exist in this work.
There is also a vulnerability and sense of impermanence in the work. The fleshy tones of the leaf-pixels suggest a living form embodied as an array of cells. The central circular leaf construction, placed within the context of the cut circles on the lid-canvas, hangs like a heavenly body in a ruddy firmament. The fleshy tones that embody this imagined planet, reminds us of the fragility of our delicate earth ecosystem.
Reading Dellert’s work in terms of the relationship of form and color and their attending associations is only one chapter in contemplating his efforts. His work also requires that we read the history and relationship of the materials, themselves, that he chooses for his collages. Dellert’s works offer a compelling aesthetic experience that, with further reading, evolves toward ecological understanding. One trajectory of thought that emerges from contemplating this piece is that the mixing of a steel oil can lid with a mesh of leaves reminds us that oil is a derivative of ancient plants, and oil provides the energy needed to forge the human creation of steel. Burning oil as fuel vitiates the fragile conditions that spawn and nurture the metabolisms of plants, and that endangerment portends peril for our planet. The circularity of these ecological relationships among the material further interconnects this piece and also pushes the work to a political level.
NEW TERRITORY
A second example of Dellert’s artistic approach is seen in the collage “New Territory.” This aesthetically captivating collage begins a discussion about the difficulties of establishing the identity of surface and core, and then turns to interrogating problems in memory, knowledge, and the process of discovery.
The collage is not simply juxtaposition or overlapping of surfaces, but rather an imbrication of surfaces with each plane representing a kind of strata in a fictitious geological time. Dellert invites us to engage archeologically with this collage. The work can be seen diachronically as a history being pealed apart inviting our interpretation of layers that suggest epochs and eras.
The work poses an interesting problem of how to unravel history given the interconnected, randomly exposed strata. The dilemma is that to reveal something can also require destroying something else. Dellert’s construction entangles us in the unavoidable epistemological problem of privileging and marginalizing phenomena as we seek to know. His work offers no solution or optimal path to discovery or investigation into these layers of knowing, thus highlighting the ad hoc and accidental as elemental, and inevitable, in our process of knowing. The work demonstrates our reading and understanding as inevitably imperfect in historical time as it balances knowledge with obscuration, and insight with blind spots.
LOOKING FOR THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL
A third piece of Dellert’s recent work is a sculpture entitled “Looking for the Bottom of the Well.” This extraordinary piece is composed of a rusty water bucket, what has no bottom, and then is lined at the bottom with the carefully cut rectangles from a wasp hive. There are more than 1000 cut pieces from the hive of the paper wasp that are arrayed radially with remarkable precision, like the rings of a tree. The result is startling. The immediate association is that there is ice at the bottom of the bucket. The work has the power to conjure the memory of a cold winter day and the moment of wonder in finding this beautiful crystalline pattern.
The title suggests a search for a finitude, or a testing of depth, in “looking for the bottom of the well”, which is often obscured and unfathomable due to the covering water and darkness. This bottomless bucket offers the beautifully arrayed wasp nest cuttings as an answer. This response engenders a swarm of associations that are difficult to untangle into a coherent narrative. The hive and bucket are social constructions from two species. The hive is made from wasp saliva; it looks like ice when reconfigured in the bucket, and acts as the bottom to a bucket that can no longer fill its function. One senses that this work holds countless morals and cautionary tales about our relation to nature and social cooperation and a false notion of certainty. But the work does not easily yield its mystery and thus appropriately reinforces Dellert’s choice of title.
WRAPPED
A fourth work of Peter Dellert’s is his sculpture, “Wrapped.” This sculpture is made of maple wood saplings and rice paper. Its construction is the three intersecting wood rods bowed to create a volume. The sticks are wrapped with rice paper to form three lens shaped surfaces to create an interior. The work stands as a pod, a womb, is phallic, and is reminiscent of a dirigible all at once. Dellert has presented a shape that challenges essentializing and balances between many polarities: familiar-alien, feminine-masculine, natural-contrived. The work is a blur between a human artifact and a natural object. The sculpture conveys containment, tension, and a moment in development portending some sort of denouement. “Wrapped” resists easy appropriation and categorization, while being somehow familiar and approachable at the same time. It recalls the artist’s continuing interest in tightly weaving and inverting polarities of meaning
The four works discussed in this essay are emblemic of Dellert’s project of exploring the interconnection of form and substance. His work pushes us to examine the origins and relationship among the form and substance scientifically, politically, and aesthetically. The works’ aesthetic lure then challenges us to engage in a rewarding analysis that yields an appreciation, and attending surprise and bewilderment, about the complexity, appropriateness and interconnectedness of being. In this way, the work is subtlety and deeply ecological.
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