Peter Krausz: (No) Man's Land    Dec 3 - Jan 16, 2010

Unlike the more familiar fresco, in which pigments are applied to a wet surface, Krausz creates his paintings using the secco technique, where pulverized pigments in an egg-based emulsion are applied to a dry plaster surface. Numerous transparent layers yield the intensity of color for which the artist’s work is known. Through use of secco, Krausz achieves remarkable luminosity and richer surface textures and perdurability than could result in any other way.

The title of his latest exhibition, (No) Man’s Land, relates directly to Krausz’ long-standing preoccupation with the concept of borders; the frontiers that sometimes follow natural geographical features but which are often arbitrarily, even brutally, imposed on nature, landscapes, and human beings. This theme began with Krausz’ surreptitious border crossing while escaping with his family from Eastern Block Romania in 1969. This theme has endured as a prominent subject in many of his paintings and photographs, including those from his Berlin Series of 1987-1989.

The border motif also relates to Krausz’ interest in man’s interrelationship with nature as it exists specifically in the Mediterranean basin. The artist has explored this theme in several other series executed and exhibited over the past twenty years such as Landscape and Memory, (De) Natura Humana, and, more recently, Helen’s Exile. (No) Man’s Land takes as its visual source the island of Cyprus, where, for the past 35 years, a Dead Zone (as it is called by the Greeks) cuts a brutal and arbitrary wound across cultivated fields, villages and even individual houses. In Krausz’ paintings, swaths of uncultivable terrain extend before the historically fecund land of old - an evocative manifestation of mankind’s ongoing struggle to live harmoniously with the natural world.

Peter Krausz was born in Romania in 1946 and graduated from the Bucharest Academy of Fine Arts in 1969. He emigrated to Montréal, Canada in 1970 and was the curator of the Saidye Bronfman Centre Art Gallery (Montréal) from 1980-1991. He joined the faculty of the University of Montréal in 1991, and is now a tenured Professor of Fine Art in the Art History department. The artist has received numerous prestigious grants from the Canadian Fine Arts Council and the Québec Ministry of Cultural Affairs. His work is included in many important collections, including the Musée d’art Contemporain, Montréal; Musée du Québec; Royal Bank of Canada; Citi Bank, New York; Air Canada; and the Jewish Museum, New York.