Peter Krausz Photographies | Photographs 1969-2015

Exhibition: September 4 to 26, 2015
Vernissage: Thursday September 3 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk: Thursday September 17 at 7 pm

The McClure Gallery is honoured to present the exhibition — Peter Krausz Photographies | Photographs 1969 – 2015. While celebrated as a well-known painter, in this exhibition Peter Krausz reveals another aspect of his démarche: a large body of images which span the time from 1969, just before he left Romania, until 2015, when he returned there for a visit. While the artist has used photography both in his installations and as sources for his large paintings, he has never shown this body of work publicly. This exhibition represents for the artist a long personal journey with images from Romania, Czechoslovakia and Italy from 69-70, Mount Athos and Mexico 77-78, Montreal in the 70’s, Turkey and India, etc.

Sandra Paikowsky writes: “Photographs by Peter Krausz are both a reflection of a career and a meditation on a life. Autobiography is at the core of visual art and these photographs document, by accident or intent, the journeys of a determined voyager, the peregrinations of a relentless traveller.” The starting point of this exhibition was a documentary film about the artist titled (No) Man’s Land produced by cinematographer Doina Harap between 2007 and 2010. Krausz began a years-long process of re-examining and selecting from photographs taken over several decades of his life, revealing images of places and events that are vaguely identifiable but leave us with a sense of disquiet, uncertainty. Solitary figures often appear against starkly empty urban spaces such that both figure and ground evoke a strong sense of the layeredness of history and memory, both personal and collective.

A catalogue of 70 reproductions, including a foreword by art historian Sandra Paikowsky and a conversation between the artist and gallery director Victoria LeBlanc, accompanies the exhibition.

Born in Romania and trained at the Bucharest Institute of Fine Arts, Peter Krausz has lived in Montreal since 1970. Formerly the curator of the Saidye Bronfman Centre Art Gallery and a teacher at Concordia University, he is currently a tenured professor at Université de Montréal. Since 1970, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Montreal and across Quebec, Canada, the United States as well as in Europe. His works can be found in many prominent private and public collections such as The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec, The Montreal Contemporary Art Museum, The Jewish Museum in New York, etc.

Photographies | Photographs 1969-2015
– Peter Krausz

76 pages (50 reproductions)
french / english
ISBN : 978-1-926492-06-3
McClure Gallery, 2015
available: McClure Gallery
$ 24.95 + tx