Currently :
“Nature”
curated by Christian Knudsen
March 8 to April 12, 2014
* When the Cathedrals were Mountains, 2005, chromogenic print, 30×40″ / 75x100cm
Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Nature, a group exhibition curated by Christian Knudsen. This series of photographs from Gabor Szilasi, Robert Walker and Martin Schop will be displayed from March 8, to April 12, 2014. The vernissage will be held on Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. in the presence of the artists and Christian Knudsen.
“I am very pleased that Gabor Szilasi, Robert Walker and Martin Schop have agreed to participate in this presentation of photographs related to Landscape / Nature.
It seems that I have spent most of my career making landscapes in one form or another. Whatever I get my hands on almost inevitably evoked landscape – no matter how abstract. I try to direct and control it, much in the same way I try to control my work, but in reality I have come to realize that it is controlling me, in the same way that my work is controlling me. I take pleasure in photographing the same things over and over as they change. Sometimes I feel that I learn something, that I perhaps see something differently.
I approached Gabor Szilasi and Robert Walker about the project and they were enthusiastic, despite the fact that nature is not their main concerns, whereas Martin has a need to periodically commune with it. He makes larger format pinhole cameras and wanders off into the wilderness to meditate.
We all live in Montreal. Unlike Martin Schop, I think that Robert Walker would shudder at the thought of going into the forest alone, but among other projects, he has over the past many years disciplined himself to repeatedly photograph the botanical gardens in our city – producing vivid images evocative of flat minimalist colour field painting of the 60’s. I think of Newmann, Rothko, Olitski and Noland among others. This work is distinctive from the dynamic, tightly composed and saturated city pop collage images that he is well known for.
Gabor Szilasi needs no introduction in Montreal. He is a very generous man whose life is well documented and who has documented much of all of our lives. He has always been very prolific. In the 1980’s he was invited to photograph Monet’s garden at Giverny. He produced a wonderful variety of compositional arrangements during the different seasons that he was there. Those are the photographs that interest me for this show and we are fortunate to display two of them.”
Christian Knudsen