Museum and Gallery Review: peter campus – Bykert

By Rosemary Mayer, Arts Magazine
December 30, 1972
peter campus’ work involved videotapes in a presentation that was definitely sculptural. campus’ new work is more obviously sculptural than that of last year in the sense that the new work is more involved with space and location. In the work at Bykert in May, 1972, the paraphernalia of video had a dominant role; the piece shown consisted of a video camera and monitor with a tiny revolving pyramid of mirrors. The mirrors reflected the room into the camera and the resulting images of the gallery and spectators were seen on the monitor. The whole apparatus was a way of recording and displacing the space and presences in the gallery. With Interface, one of the two pieces in this show he has made the video images larger and hence more predominant in the available space. A large glass pane both reflects the viewer’s image and serves as the screen for the viewer’s video image. One has the impression of seeing one’s own ghost. The effect with a number of people in the room and all their images on the screen is weird. Mer, the second piece, is a large mirrored pyramid standing in the middle of a room. A T.V. monitor was on the floor between the pyramid and the triangular reflection the pyramid cast on the wall from a ceiling spotlight. The Camera was on the ceiling. The viewer’s image in the monitor was that reflected from the pyramid and caught by the camera above. As in Interface multiple “realities” appeared in different places, making one question the space in the gallery, one’s location in it, and the location of the video image.