Opening Reception:
November 10th, 2018, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m.
(Memorial Gathering at 2:00 PM)
University of Bridgeport’s Schelfhaudt Gallery
Arnold Bernhard Arts & Humanities Center
84 Iranistan Avenue, Bridgeport, CT 06604
Curated by Johnes Ruta azothgallery@comcast.net 203.387.4933
Panel Art Discussion:
Thursday, November 8th, 4:30 - 5:30 PM
Cynthia Anderson (wife), Joe Provey, and Johnes Ruta (curator).
University of Bridgeport’s Schelfhaudt Gallery, Bridgeport, CT
Exhibition: November 10th, 2018- January 5th, 2019
This exhibition celebrates the life and works of Peter Konsterlie, the
Gallery Director of the Schelfhaudt Gallery for 5 years and a well-loved
Professor
of Art History at U.B. for 15 years. Peter passed away suddenly at age
55, on August 13, 2018. He received his BA from the Minneapolis College
of Art and Design. As Director of the University's Schelfhaudt Gallery,
he produced exemplary exhibitions for the school and broader community.
His dedication and inspiration within the Shintaro Akatsu School of
Design at the University of Bridgeport will be deeply missed.
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Peter
Konsterlie – Eulogy
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Peter Konsterlie Memorial Art Panel November 8,
2018
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| Peter
Konsterlie is a deeply educated art historian, with a profound understanding
and sense of art and artistic expression but – Peter is an original
-- his vision comes out of his personal psyche, his imagery is
a joy-filled for all to see in the many exhibits he's done. His imagery
is carried out from his his deep Subconscious. Colors are vivid, lines,
forms, and objects are explosive, elongated, and implosive. Peter
had the great CAPACITY to think for himself, we've all (the panel
group) discussed his power ! His progress as an artist is conscious
and permanent in his work. His consciousness and wit with people created
recognition for his ideas and under-standing to become successful
– able to bring forth visions that are related to his own personal
identity and to universal phenomena. Joe Provey, in our discussions, said, “Out of all the artists that (he) knows, Peter was the most informed about art history,” Peter's basic approach as a teacher was his vast knowledge, and his own creative talent and what he learned in the constant prolific production of his artwork – he was a perpetual and dedicated painter, who would cloister himself in his basement workroom studio, where he was out of range of the telephone and its interruptions. …. Rock, Blues, and Folk Rock were his creative backdrop and accompaniment to this self-imposed and productive isolation. Great things emerged from there, but somethings remained down there to become his private dimension. But he and I managed to get together often – to visit museums and galleries together in CT and NYC, one time with his father and brother Michael to the Yale Art Gallery, followed by a great hours-long 4-way conversation at Starbucks. Peter was a youngest of four siblings, His father Paul Konsterlie was an historian and a Graphics Designer, whom I had the fortune to get to know. As a child, Peter was probably the benefactor of upbringing at a young age by the older children, as what would normally be the relaxed parental process after the three older kids being raised ahead of him. But the rationalism of his father Paul's Graphics Design orientation was expanded and surpassed in Peter's life into an open exploration into the irrational world of pure abstraction and representational abstraction ! But – Peter has the INTUITIVE talent to really see and express from his psyche, from his hallucinatory view, and the stark views of his anatomical medical studies, and further from his knowledge and own relationship to objects, Forms, Lines and delineations. Patterns and sensations emerge. Recessive spaces in some pieces, total foreground presences in many others, like the recurrence of his Bubble motif. Bright colors are present as discrete illuminations. Vivid dots of Light, Bubbles of Space/Time, Spectral bands of Energy-- psychic realizations, and dimension in real space conveyed to canvas and panels. Spatial relation-ships are formed, and his brush-strokes become alive and seem to experience Joy on their own ! There is pure rationality and Consciousness in his dream phenomena. There is light and energy but no malevolent entities visible or obfuscated-- none present or hidden -- even when the subject comes out with a negative form, like the large dark face on hung canvas, the sensation seems to me a rational malevolence rather than a mysterious evil. This is because Peter himself is a Positive Energy Force, like the 11 foot tall canvas there ? “COSMIC MAN,” both when he was here on Earth, and I believe in his essence in his Karmic eternal reality. (As I've said and reassured to Cindy ) - Peter is timelessly a good angel who conveys his views of Infinite realms (such as “Purifying Vortex” and “Eternal Maze”), and his visions of internal psychic dimensions – these are carefully constructed, but deeply interior patterns – that is, what the Theosophists call the Hypostases, the underlying constructive pillars of the Created Universe. “THE GOD PARTICLE” and his geometric galactic patterns of oval lines, and “SPIRIT SPACE,” and the Oceanic feeling of the bubbles in the sea blue field, next to the spotted “FLYING FISH,” in the second room. The sensation of the so many different kinds and colors of bubbles is specific in his work, and should be looked at closely – they are bubbles in the ocean, bubbles in the Mind, and bubbles in Outer Space, the cosmos. This was Peter's upper level of psychological consciousness, and it was this consciousness in art that he taught to students as a way to understand and appreciate the world and the whole universe. But even with these intensities coming out of the Psyche, Peter creates these visionary paintings from a CONSCIOUS level, creating original artworks. Here, there is profound Pathos in his “Service Men Series” – commemorating in watercolors the faces of 240 Armed Service men killed in ONE WEEK in the Vietnam War in 1968. Peter liked artists such as Paul Klee, Robert Rauschen-berg, Claes Oldenberg, and Andy Warhol, but given his early education of Art History and the panorama of historical works that his learning process was exposed to -- centuries of diverse and wild works that he's studied – I can see that his perpetual education came through his personal work, his free exploration of everything he could get onto his canvases. Like the Curvature of Space/Time. – this was his personal Continuum, his continuing Experiential Learning Curve. Johnes Ruta – independent curator & art theorist November 8, 2018 |
Peter was a prolific and passionate visual artist. He brought a unique perspective to his paintings integrating several visual styles from pop art to abstract expressionism. His drips of paint combined with spray paint formed patterns, becoming a structure on the canvas for his metaphysical themed Abstracts.
Peter Konsterlie had several solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, most notably The Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Plains Art Museum, Carnegie Mellon, Washington D.C., Sarah Bowen Gallery in Williamsburg, NY, Housatonic Museum, Claire Oliver Gallery, N.Y, and most recently at the Drawing Center Viewing Program in New York City. Konsterlie's work has been purchased and leased for feature film productions, and television productions such as the Blue Bloods with Tom Selleck, and on the ABC news program 20/20 with John Stossel.
Donations may be made via https://give.bridgeport.edu/ or (203)576-4542.
Please visit http://www.backward.us/pk/index.htm
to see more of Peter Konsterlie’s work.
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