The Magic of Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen – Folded Thoughts – Perry Rubenstein Gallery
December 11, 2008 – January 17, 2009

There is something uniquely whimsical about Peter Callensen’s paper cut outs. By uniquely, I mean unique to the loud, ultra modern, and primarily abstract vibe of the Chelsea gallery district. Even the art that creates a quieter atmosphere is generally bogged down in obtrusively demanding theoretical noise. Not the work of Callensen. Walking into the Perry Rubenstein gallery is almost like walking into a library. There is an air of reverence and appreciation, the kind that can’t help but accompany a manifestation of simplicity that does not tax a person’s mental presence, and instead invites it.
If there is a theme to Callesen’s work it is the relationship between positive and negative space. Each of the constructions is a dialog between a sheet of paper and the space that has been removed from it. The cut out portions of the paper make a positive image and the constructions from these cut out portions make a three dimensional image that has some sort of direct relationship with the negative space it is composed of. The gallery is filled with these intricately detailed forms under titles like fall (2008), a constructed skeleton lying as if ejected from a tree composed of negative space and, human ruin (2008), the intricate miniature of the ruins of a castle in the shape of a human body. While the forms are always easily recognizable, it is the consistency of the relationships between positive and negative space, or between constructed and subtracted space, that is rewardingly congruent. These are big ideas: life and death, history and existence, built and taken away; that aren’t generally easy to address in way that always makes visual sense. Some how Callesen does it though, with a childish sincerity that tugs at the heart strings and quickens the mind. It is a reminder that art can be complicated with out being complex and that beauty only exists when it is half present and half imagined.