The old man and his tin cans" takes its name from a joke about von Tiesenhausen's practice which largely consists of playful exploration through any medium at hand; found, purchased, collected, or residue from a myriad of previous projects.
While purchasing the entire stock of cookie tins at a thrift store, the cashier asked "what are you doing with all those beautiful containers?" von Tiesenhausen responded "you probably don't want to know"
This exhibition features the artist's enigmatic, almost alchemical carbonization works and begins to answer that question.
Peter von Tiesenhausen is a settler artist based in rural Treaty 8 territory, in the community of Demmitt, AB. von Tiesenhausen's long-standing multidisciplinary practice staunchly eludes categorization; land art, community-building, steel sculpture, environmental activism, bronze-casting, and wild blueberry propagation equally contribute to a complex synergy: a life lived as art.
Emerging in resonance with the natural cycles of the land he stewards and lives on, von Tiesenhausen's work contains an elemental urgency—a capacity to demonstrate momentary, precise unities between celestial mechanics and rural common-sense: states in which every droplet of water reflects the sun.
