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Peter Happel Christian

@phcphcphc

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Chair, Professor, Gallery Director 〰️ Dept of the Arts @stcloudstate

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Work Life Balance closes today. I spent good time in the gallery earlier this week making proper documentation pictures. Here is a selection of them. A full set is on my website. Dang, I’m happy with this show and grateful to Joe Smith for the opportunity!

Central to the exhibition is the piece “Time Signature” and the gestural mark of an “X” that guided me through much of the making of the work (image 10). To make this piece I appropriated the hospital emergency room intake form my brother, David, signed on the day of his death in October 2018. The print is the exact scale of the form – no bigger, no smaller – so to experience it in the gallery is like seeing the actual, redacted piece of paper. I digitally erased everything from the form except for his “signature” which he penned under acute distress. This artwork is also part of a long-term project, Syncopate, that works through the material and emotional aftermath of his untimely departure. In some ways, “Time Signature” is a tabula rasa in my studio practice. After his death, how I approach working and how I think of materials shifted greatly. I “paired” this piece with Sam Johnson’s “Spherical Jar” which kind of reads as an urn, but more importantly, it reads as simple a vessel in the primary form of a sphere. Something celestial about his piece to me. That jar is wood fired is significant. To become its final form, the jar absorbs the heat and ash of the firing process. My brother was cremated and ultimately his final form was ash – materially the same element that completes Sam’s jar. I’m so thankful to Sam for his willingness to collaborate on this element of the show.

Thanks for reading along as I posted details about the show✌️ taken in Denler Gallery by @phcphcphc

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2 years ago

The most current iteration of my long-term project, “10,001,” takes the form of 25 mounted photographs displayed on an oak book cart. Central to the project is a water-filled, abandoned granite quarry within the walls of the St Cloud prison and the knowledge that the granite to build the perimeter wall was quarried on-site by prisoners over a century ago. The book cart was crafted by incarcerated labor at MCF-Faribault and purchased through MINNCOR Industries. Deepest gratitude to those laborers unknown to me. So many layers of time, histories, and politics in this piece — it’s been about 10 years in the making since the first seed of this project planted in my brain.

I’m beyond excited to share that this work is included in the exhibition, “A Nation Takes Place,” at Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, MN. Opening is on Thursday, August 22 and runs through March 2025. Big thanks to @ndgeonegro for believing in this work and including me in the mix of artists, artworks and conversations to be had, and to the MMAM for the support🎊 by @phcphcphc

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2 years ago

So happy to have this project out in the world and grateful for all the people who helped make it happen! Swing by table D15 to see which versions of Same Sum you experience.

Posted @withrepost • @conveyorstudio We are excited to announce the launch of Same Sum, a new photobook by Peter Happel Christian that playfully explores observation, chance, and the everyday magic of ordinary life.⁠
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The included photographs are part of an ongoing, expansive project of the same name that began as intentional exercises in observation. The result is a vast collection of subjects and situations—some found, others constructed—that occur in parallel to Happel Christian’s daily life. The title takes inspiration from an Italo Calvino essay wherein experience is fluid and meanings are flexible—that within the finite is an infinite. Similarly, the images in Same Sum have no fixed sequence, allowing for the possibility of seemingly endless experiences of the same images. ⁠
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The book’s interactive design is inspired by card games and magic tricks; the double coil bound format creates two decks of photographs to riffle shuffle, creating a unique set of image combinations determined by chance.⁠
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📖📚📒⁠
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Book Launch & Signing ✏️⁠
Saturday, October 15th @ 3pm⁠
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Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair⁠
548 W 22nd Street, October 13–16, 2022⁠
Conveyor Editions, Table D15 ⁠
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Reserve a Ticket, Link in Bio!⁠
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Cover Design by Studio Elana Schlenker & Illustrations by George Wylesol. Printed at Conveyor Studio on our @hp Indigo press on @colorplan_papers Lavender. taken in New York, New York by @phcphcphc

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4 years ago

The latest iteration of “Work Life Balance” opened on Oct 1 at Index Gallery, University of Dayton in Ohio. I’m happy the show is in the mix of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial out of Cincinnati and I’m looking forward to giving an artist talk on Thursday, Oct 22 🎉 Massive thanks to @jwhitaker1515 for the invitation and Nicholaus Arnold for the installation and production prowess. New wood and fabric sculptures, fabric prints, vinyl adhesive prints and good ol’ archival inkjet prints make up the materials. My exhibition statement written in the 3rd person is below.

Work Life Balance is an iterative exhibition of photographs and sculpture by Peter Happel Chrisian that studies and imagines homeostasis as the primary desire of modern life. Through a range of subject matter that draws from personal narratives and economics to gestures and objects, Happel Christian’s installation meditates on the namesake of the project, a phrase made popular in the last half decade, and its natural antonym of “play death imbalance.” Imagined by the artist as an equally valid inversion of the popular, aspirational life goal, Happel Christian’s work entangles the sentiments of each as a sort of guide to follow. Photographs document moments of ingenuity and surprise or imagine humdrum actions as mystical gestures, while sculptures capture the fatigued body’s need for rest, rehabilitation, or support. by @phcphcphc

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10 days ago

Pseudo contact sheet of a sunny and very humid driveway studio session. A homemade structure for a water softener (???) that I removed from underneath our basement stairs to make room. Crumpled red paper backdrop rose up out of my art building office/studio during a big clean-out. It’s all perfectly imperfect. by @phcphcphc

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4 months ago

1 day, 3 stumps by @phcphcphc

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5 months ago

See ya on the flip-side darkroom clown! taken in St. Cloud State University by @phcphcphc

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5 months ago

“Prof Happel Christian is the Chuck Norris of contemporary art class. He’s a kickass teacher who can connect to the students to make learning fun. I’ll definitely drink a beer in honor of his class.”

Ok anonymous U of Arizona student from 22 years ago in my 200+ seat lecture class “Survey of Contemporary Art”. Thanks for hyping me up so early in my commitment to teaching. Hope that beer was tasty. Had to wear a mic because it was such a large hall and was the class where I cut the text book in half down the spine so I could more easily bike with it to campus in Tucson.

Cleaning out files can be a real joy! taken in University of Arizona by @phcphcphc

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8 months ago

Hard lean into a modern, simple still life image inspired by the Dutch painting genre found in Western art history that I’ll let Meta have :-) Golden paper plate and a folded/unfolded grocery store list on a t-shirt Amazon delivered by mistake (very likely picked by a legit warehouse robot). I think the makeshift tinfoil snoot I attached to my Alien Bees strobe light really nails the type of lighting I’m after. by @phcphcphc

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10 months ago

My semester long sabbatical is winding down. Every profession should have something like the time and space it’s given me. It’s not quite over, but I’m starting to have a good look at what I made while researching the Dutch still life painting genre and the social/economic/political conditions around its heyday that lasted a couple centuries. Many thanks to the squirrel that turned a pie pumpkin into a gourd void. by @phcphcphc

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10 months ago

Studio view of one of many new collages from the last few weeks (collage seems to be the best term for this, but it sure doesn’t look like what I picture as a collage). In “Meditation Shop” the same retail shop window in Alnwick, England has been captured four years apart, printed locally in MN by Walmart Photo, and affixed to expired, fogged Kodak gelatin silver paper I acquired from the darkroom of a deceased, longtime hobbyist photographer in Saint Cloud. Time could be “the” perennial subject of photography no matter the subject depicted in an image, and I’ve long struggled with how to communicate/remind us of this without plainly stating it. This statement obviously helps, but how to hint at it otherwise? Four years of time exists between the two machine prints while the gelatin silver paper is decades older and will continue to absorb light and change forever, more or less. This collage will not look like this after today. The machine prints will stay relatively the same, but their surroundings, by comparison, will undergo dramatic change. I really love working with fogged gelatin silver paper; it’s both alive and dead. Alive because it’s organic and light sensitive and dead because it can’t be used for its intended purpose in the darkroom. Overall dimensions are 16” x 20” by @phcphcphc

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a year ago

Sunshine on inside out General Electric AM/FM radio on blackout window shade. Rare horizontal composition! by @phcphcphc

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a year ago