HEW (AND CRY): Peter von Tiesenhausen takes his axe to the city

Name: HEW (AND CRY): Peter von Tiesenhausen takes his axe to the city
Item: Esker Foundation
Author: Monique Westra

by Monique Westra

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Photo: Peter von Tiesenhausen.

"The Watchers"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "The Watchers," 1997-2002, five carved, charred spruce logs, each 8’ tall, on 35,000-kilometre journey around Canada.

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Photo: Craig Richards.

Peter von Tiesenhausen poses with "Flood/Plain"

Peter von Tiesenhausen poses with "Flood/Plain" at the Banff Centre.

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Photo: Peter von Tiesenhausen.

"Relief"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Relief," 2012, beetle-kill pine timbers, stacked and carved, 12’ x 16’ x 5’.

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Photo: Kim Scott.

"Installation view of "Elevations" solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, installation view of Elevations solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie in 2012, showing "Revelation," charred and carved plywood, 18' x 22'; "Relief," 12’ x 16’ beetle kill pine timbers; (far left) and "Bell," carved wood, propolis, chain and rope.

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Photo: Peter von Tiesenhausen.

"Bell"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Bell," 2001, carved wood, propolis, chain and rope, 7’ x 4’ x 20”.

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Image courtesy of the artist.

"Temple of 1000 Suns"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Temple of 1000 Suns," 2011, video still.

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Image courtesy of the artist.

"Temple of 1000 Suns"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Temple of 1000 Suns," 2011, video still.

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Image courtesy of the artist.

"Deep Space"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Deep Space," 2011.

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Photo: Kim Scott.

"Pulp and Ashes, Fire and Ice"

Peter von Tiesenhausen, "Pulp and Ashes, Fire and Ice," 2012, 150 suspended drawings, ashes on pulp, two video projections, ice boat and burning pine, installation view from Elevations, solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.

HEW (AND CRY): Peter von Tiesenhausen takes his axe to the city

By Monique Westra

A small boy on a northern Alberta homestead peers at the cutting block in his father’s workshop. Intrigued by the scores and gouges left by his dad’s radial arm saw, he sees in his mind a vast city in its rough-hewn expanse. Five decades later, he remembers the image conjured by his imagination. Now a renowned artist, he is working in a studio at the Banff Centre, preparing for an important solo show at the Esker Foundation in Calgary. His sudden recollection of this childhood memory is the catalyst he needs.

Still living near Demmitt, 80 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, on land farmed by his Baltic-German immigrant father, Peter von Tiesenhausen has been engaged in his multi-dimensional and idiosyncratic art practice since the early 1990s, passionately exploring the probing questions of our age. In his land art, he has used vines, trees, willow branches and pond ice to create art out in the bush, amid open fields and even up in treetops. In 1997, he embarked on a five-year odyssey with five larger-than-life human figures standing upright in the back of his pick-up truck. Silent sentinels, these anonymous blackened and charred wooden Watchers travelled some 35,000 kilometres around much of Canada. In 2005, he set a legal precedent by successfully claiming copyright of his land as an autonomous work of art, thereby protecting it from encroaching oil and gas interests.

That extraordinary and defiant act, as well as his unwavering resolve to live in a relatively remote region, has led younger artists to view von Tiesenhausen as “an inspirational figure,” says Naomi Potter, the Esker’s director and curator. Potter, who organized von Tiesenhausen’s exhibition, Experience of the Precisely Sublime, notes that his work is studied in art schools, including the Alberta College of Art and Design. That von Tiesenhausen is hugely important in the West is beyond dispute. He’s less known in eastern Canada, but does not seem to care. He is compelled to express his insights – always profound and relevant – through original and unorthodox work. Potter notes von Tiesenhausen is not swayed by popularity or commercial success. Indeed, most of his pieces cannot be bought. They are famously ephemeral and not designed to last. “He is an artist through and through,” she says.

Although best known for his land art and use of organic materials, von Tiesenhausen’s body of work is much more diverse, not only in the types of materials he uses, but also in how and where he makes his art. He cannot be pigeonholed as a particular type of artist. Yet his vision is remarkably consistent. All his projects are characterized by his brute honesty and directness of approach. This is especially true of his huge sculptures, which can be simple in form, but, at the same time, are rich in meaning and metaphorical allusion. Such monumental works leave an indelible impression. Their power and beauty are mesmerizing, eliciting a visceral emotional response.

A case in point is Flood/Plain, the fascinating work von Tiesenhausen created during a residency last fall at the Banff Centre. Although materials are critically important to him, he often trusts chance and circumstance to guide him. So, when he arrived at the centre, he started to make inquiries. The preparator at the Walter Phillips Gallery told von Tiesenhausen he could use 24 sheets of MDF – short for medium-density fibreboard, an engineered wood product – left over from a previous installation. Von Tiesenhausen balked. “I hate MDF,” he says. “Terrible stuff. Toxic. Just a terrible material.” But he was told: “Take it or leave it – there it is.” He took it as a challenge.

Choosing a material he found inherently repugnant was an unusual decision. Stronger and denser than particleboard, MDF is created by combining sawdust with wax and formaldehyde resin and pressing it into panels. Common in kitchen cabinets and furniture, MDF is the ubiquitous urban material of choice. Although von Tiesenhausen despised its bland uniformity and its slickly deceptive appearance, he needed to understand its properties. He started to experiment by cutting it and soaking it in water. But, after several weeks, he still had no idea what to do. Then, one day he started hitting an MDF board with an axe. As he looked at the ragged texture, a vivid and distant memory was suddenly unleashed. He remembered his childhood vision of a city spread across his father’s cutting block. His creative doldrums had ended.

What followed was a frenzied burst of activity. Standing vertically on their ends and strapped tightly together, the one-inch thick MDF sheets created a dense and solid structure – a perfect cube. But von Tiesenhausen’s thoughts were far from ideas of perfection and impenetrability. He wanted to underscore the vulnerability of the contemporary city. Dismantling the cube, he submerged the bottom eight inches of each sheet into water. Unlike wood, which returns to its original shape after being soaked, MDF remains permanently distorted. The chameleon-like material is stripped of its magic and becomes garbage. Von Tiesenhausen knew this was potent symbolism, especially after last year’s floods in southern Alberta. “I thought water, MDF, urbanization, flooding, geology, Alberta – all of those ideas,” he says. He bound the damaged planks together as tightly as possible. The top surface of the cube was tightly aligned, pristine and smooth. But its lower parts splayed out, producing a structure that was wider at the bottom than the top. No longer compact, it was punctuated by gaps between the swollen planks.

Working outdoors, where the still-wet boards quickly froze, von Tiesenhausen put on a mask to protect himself from toxins and climbed on top of the massive structure. Using an axe and a circular saw, he ripped into its surface. First, he gouged out a grid. Then, with increasing force and what he describes as reckless abandon, he attacked, repeatedly slashing at the MDF to expose a jagged topography of grooves and gashes, offset by protrusions, curving lines and flatter segments. A cityscape began to emerge in low relief with buildings, roads and parks. It was a convincing simulation of a sprawling metropolis seen from an aerial perspective.

But looked at from the side, the structure reads like a cross-section of the earth. For von Tiesenhausen, it brings to mind the province’s oil industry. “Because of the size of the city and the density and mass of it, it looks like a geological site as well,” he says. “Like this might be half a mile down, where we are drilling and fracking.” Most strikingly, about one quarter up the vertical face is the wavy horizontal stain of the watermark: an unequivocal reference to a flood.

Von Tiesenhausen’s show at the Esker includes a large, low-hanging bell suspended from the ceiling. Strangely erotic in shape and texture with its two dangling clappers, it can be straddled, creating a cheeky parody of bull riding. He has also completed three stunning videos related to fire. One of them, Temple of 1000 Suns, was shot inside an abandoned beehive burner, a gigantic structure used by the logging industry to incinerate sawdust and other wood debris. The intense heat warps the burner’s steel walls, puncturing them with myriad tiny holes, says von Tiesenhausen. “Each one is like a camera, which projects the sun inside the building. A thousand suns in there and they are all around. And as the clouds cover the sun, all the suns disappear. And then they come back.”

One of the exhibition’s most spectacular works is a monumental wall. The title, Relief, is a pun that refers both to the piece’s carved surface and to the experience of emotional release. Like all von Tiesenhausen works, it has a story. For several years, the project dearest to his heart was a community centre in Demmitt built with timber from hundreds of pines, all victims of the pine-beetle epidemic. Recently completed, the beautiful building is a testament to the commitment and physical labour of von Tiesenhausen, his family and his neighbours. As a collaborative project, he says it was a joy to build. But, at the same time, some residents were opposed. Von Tiesenhausen found himself immersed in a bitter political situation that left him frustrated, baffled and emotionally drained. “I needed to remove myself from that being and way of thinking,” he says. “How do I get over the trauma of being criticized on all levels?”

He turned to art and a material close at hand. Rotting out in his fields were logs too twisted and knotty to use in the community hall. He assembled them into a massive wall on which he vented his pent-up feelings. “I hacked this mountain image into it with a chainsaw and a broad axe, as if it was a violent meditation,” he says. “It was a wonderful exercise in freeing that torture that we all face in life.” Ironically, the aggression embodied in making the work yields a beautiful and resplendent image outside the bounds of human time. Huge and magnificent, the mountain is calm and meditative. Like von Tiesenhausen’s best work, it lets viewers share a moment of spiritual transcendence, reminding them they are in the presence of a truly visionary artist.

Peter von Tiesenhausen’s exhibition, Experience of the Precisely Sublime, is at the Esker Foundation in Calgary from Jan. 18 to May 4.