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The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers: 2.8 Peter CoffinPost an Event »

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

April 7 - May 3, 2009

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360 Kansas Street San Francisco, CA 94103
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The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers: 2.8 Peter Coffin Peter Coffin, Untitled, 2008. 30 monitors, 30 DVD players and 30 DVDs, 84 X 113 X 18 in.
The three pieces by New York-based artist Peter Coffin included in Passengers continue his study of behavior, through examining instincts and environments from the world around us. In his work, Coffin frequently uses strategies of displacement to make the natural seem highly unnatural. Untitled (Gallery Soundtrack, 415-551-9206), from 2008, can be experienced remotely by calling the main Wattis Institute gallery phone number. The artist has created a series of imagined environments through the use of sounds—such as a babbling brook, playground noises, and birdcalls—that can be heard in the background of the phone line, situating callers into an environment that is highly removed from the one they assume to be dialing. Coffin's mesmerizing video Untitled (One Minute Breach), from 2007, documents a whale breaking the surface of the ocean in one continuous circle. The artist highlights the extraordinary trait of breaching by isolating the whale's momentous leap. Inspired by a definition of the term aesthetics as "an idea that sets humankind apart from other animal species," Untitled (2008) is based on the artist's quest for an animal that does have an aesthetic sensibility. Coffin discovered that the Satin Bower bird exhibits this sense of aesthetics in seeking out blue objects for building its nest. Using a collection of blue flowers, egg shells, and more typically trash and man-made blue items, the bird's impressive display is meant to attract mates. Visitors to Passengers are invited to participate in building a Satin Bower bird nest on a human-scale by contributing blue objects to the work, encouraging the viewer to be taken temporarily out of his own aesthetic element to adopt the bird's visual preference.