Peter Vandermark

About the work

The following transcript is a semi fictional interview.
Q + A
Q. Western sculpture seems to have permanently migrated from the human figure to the built environment.
A. I’ve long been preoccupied with architecture, furnishings, models, maquettes, design. Everything is designed now, the body and nature just as much as buildings and things.
Q. So your sculpture explores the radical reconfiguration of human scale within the built environment?
A. Yes – but no artist just applies ideas. Artists ‘explore’ form first and foremost – modulations of form. Nonetheless scaling that environment back down to the human without directly representing the figure, my work implies the body, implies human use without…
Q. …In a totally designed world we are nothing but implied presence?
A. That’s too apocalyptic. Better to say my practice is devoted to exploring the implications of the designed environment on human spatial ecology, that is, the scale, dimensions and textures of inhabitation. Sculpture is always a study in proxemics, human proxemics.
Q. Human – for now.
A. For the foreseeable future.

Image courtesy of the artist

About the artist