Kyle Adam Kalev Peets: Hard Sayin’ Not Knowin’

“Hard Sayin’ Not Knowin’ considers landscape as a process, not a thing. I think of landscape as an expanded concept that considers its always changing entanglements with colonialism, late capitalism, ecological devastation, popular culture, science, myth, and the body. This project begins with a slow turn back to my Estonian roots to embrace pre-Christian magical thinking, animism, awe and wonder. Estonia was one of the last European countries to be converted from Paganism to Christianity. Today Estonia is one of the least religious countries in Europe. Only a small percentage of Estonians believe in God, but most believe they can talk to trees. This body of work has something to do with that.

“I prioritize intuition, failure and chance over logic. Layering and repetition are used to create hypnotic rhythms that look back to ancient spiritual technologies that disrupt logical thinking patterns, like spinning in a circle or repeating a word over and over and over and over. The layering of multiple photographs onto one picture plane challenges the western obsession with the individual — especially as it’s enforced by the single authoritative lens of the camera. Layering creates abstractions that confuse our relationship to nature as it’s mediated through images. A layered image obstructs legibility but also surfaces new forms of reading. I think of this as an alternative tool for understanding, revealing the hidden by challenging how we expect landscape pictures to look.”

Biography

Kyle Adam Kalev Peets is a multi-disciplinary artist-educator and plant lover. He has had solo exhibitions at Carnation Contemporary (Portland, OR), Platte Forum gallery (Denver, CO) as well as group exhibitions like, Art Shanty on the frozen White Bear Lake (Minneapolis, MN). His work was published in the periodical SPRTS by Endless Editions (New York, NY), archived in the Watson Library Special Collections, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, Manhattan, Artists’ Books. He received his MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa as well as a Graduate Certificate in Book Arts from the Iowa Center for The Book. Kyle currently teaches Print and Book Arts at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.