Peter Wilde

SCULPTURE

Peter Wilde is a German/Canadian artist living in Brandenburg. Born in Toronto in 1961, he received his BFA from York University in 1984. After an initial art career focused on sculpture, he turned to painting as his primary medium for many years. This hiatus from carving has been broken after 15 years — a decision influenced by his recent relocation to the countryside during the global pandemic. Early examples of his carved wood sculptures can be found in museums and churches in Canada, as well as two war memorials in Washington DC.

In his paintings, Wilde explores the social implications of the internet; from the influence of digital information on collective values, to the many facets of human behaviour expressed on social media. These interests continue in his treatment of sculpture

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, particularly the two pieces on display here. Both follow in the long tradition of wood carvings found in churches and museums all over northern Europe. Titled Wait and Guard, they are carved from linden wood, washed with thin layers of acrylic paint, which reveal the pattern of the wood and also evoke the transparency of skin.

The sculptures are a foil to one another — two opposing expressions of a shared anxiety about revealing the human body. In the first, Wait, the male figure wears only a pair of white briefs and clutches his genitals. In doing so, he expresses all of the shame, anxiety and irrationality associated with puritanical religious views on the reproductive organs. So marked is his anxiety about his genitals, that he covers them with his hands over his undergarments.

In contrast, the second sculpture, Guard, portrays a male figure who is totally nude except for a medical mask, which has been carved into the wood and, in a sense, integrated into his anatomy. Unlike his clothed counterpart, he represents a contemporary figure in a time when sexting as a first introduction to a partner is normal, internet porn is accessible to all, and male full-frontal nudity in a non-sexual context has become much more mainstream on TV and in film.

Here, the focus of anxiety is the mouth:

Since this past year, in the shadow of the global pandemic, we have been called upon to fulfil a social contract which necessitates the wearing of masks for the protection of our fellow citizens. On a collective psychological level, the unmasked mouth has become a source of fear and anxiety, mirroring many of the connotations of nudity associated with the genitals (eg: fear of disease and breaking of social codes). A naked mouth at the supermarket has become the unmistakable sign of a belligerent or a madman. Even the sight of unmasked faces in crowd scenes on television and in movies elicits a visceral reaction.

Both sculptures deal with nakedness and the range of instinctive, complex feelings that are associated with that state of being.