studio:christensen

Pete Zebley photo-emulsion screen-printing

…I spend a lot of time traveling—by foot, by bike, by subway—through the city. I soak up the moods and social pressures around me—witnessing change. Traveling the art centers of Europe (particularly Berlin), I soaked up a lot of the German aesthetic—which is very much based on the stark image. A little on the dark side, it’s something that I found fascinating. The city is like a playground on a corpse. It’s just a very open, wonderful place but very dark…a very haunted place. There is something I wanted to bring back and I think that sits well for me while living in this false optimism that surrounds us in the States.

The little tin drum boy…there’s something disturbing about his face. He confronts menace by banging on his drum as a form of artistic expression and then when that fails, he has nothing else but his horrible voice that shrieks and breaks everything around him. And I think that there is a connection between that character and our generation right now.

…I use my own photography and found imagery, process them, and make screens out of them. There’s something disposable about the screen-printing. It’s usually not meant for permanent things. I think disposable is something that hovers above everyone’s heads. There is debate over whether the world we live in is disposable and there are certain forces that are pushing it further down the tubes and then there are others that are trying to save this because we want permanency.I want to create these permanent works in a disposable world using a disposable method.

…The prints become the backdrop for my expressionist manual process. The addition of the manual allows for a margin of error that creates beautiful moments and allows me to exploit the material qualities of the paint. I feel the bridge between the two is the human error. Painting with a brush or with a knife on top of the screen-print is almost a celebration of imperfection—like liberation from the confines of perfection, whereas when my hand is seen in the actual screen print it’s seen as an error…where can these meet up?  What is that space between error and liberation?  I feel almost an autobiographical quality to that process, to where a lot of people see what I do / the life I live as being just crazy and others see it as just a break-out…and a real liberated way of living.

video interview

solo exhibit - March 9-April 8th

studio:christensen

333 south 20th st

philadelphia pa 19103

**reception march 9 7-10pm