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The Illuminated Landscape 1996 |
"... Peter Terezakis' light installation powerfully suggests heat lightning fragmenting the desert's night air..."
— Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times
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My first outdoor light sculpture consisted of ten vertical
elements,
eight feet in height, fifty feet apart. With the help of artist Robert Pepper we were able to come up with a way for me to describe a segment of an ellipse five hundred feet in length across the rolling contours of a landscape in Reading,
Pennsylvania (1996). |
Since then, the sculpture has
been recreated and repeated in a variety of settings on several
continents. Always at twilight and for a few hours
into the night. Year after year, each experience continues to be different.
Who would have thought that Heraclitus' "No Man Ever Steps In The Same River Twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man," would apply to a an experiment become a techno-ritual, and now a compulsion?
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The effect of watching the lights is difficult to explain. There is something about experiencing the flickering dance between light and shadow over the plain which opens a floodgate of thoughts, visuals, dreams.
There is an uneven pushing
back of the gathering dark as flashes of light seem to depict an uneven
arc of some imagined life. Revisited memories
of frailty, vulnerability, and ultimate temporality; a quiet
stand against the inevitable.
Book ended within the play of light and shadow is a dwelling place for mystery,
promise, a sinusoidal flow of power, and the framing of unanswerable questions. |
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| Far from things man-made, as the sun sets and before darkness falls, the earth and sky come alive with a kind of magic. Near tactile, delectable mystery and the gift of bearing
witness to the every day miracle
of day
becoming
night. With this moment, the freeing of imagination and memory. |
Memories like candles in church. Bonfires at the beach. Sparks from a burning building. Fireflies escaping through holes in the lid of a catch jar. Memories
beget memories. Like driving through the Connecticut
countryside. Remembering that once upon a time I was a child, and felt removed
from the affairs of the world. Remembering speeding along a country road in winter, white snow pushed off the black roadway. Warm, safe, protected within the vibrating womb of the family car. Father's strong tanned hands on the chrome and black steering wheel, my nose and forehead pressed against the cool window,
hands cupping my temples. Running my eyes over forested hills,
probing
shadows,
seeing mystery in the fleeting landscape. When I listened with an open heart, I would feel the cool dark's patient return caress as we traveled on black bands burned across the body
of the earth.
A life-time later, this work has become
a digital metaphor
for
life
and
death;
of
being
and not. Like fireflies the changing light
invokes a sensation of physical movement across a landscape of time
and
imagination,
changing the way I see everything.
Peter Terezakis,
San Diego, December 2003 |
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