A Look and a Distance: Peter Barelkowski Nahum Flores

May 13 - June 3
Open House: Saturday, May 13 2-5pm

We are thrilled to host an exhibition about the always relevant topic of displacement and migration. Two accomplished artists, Peter Barelkowski and Nahum Flores, present uniquely distinctive work on this subject.

Barelkowski has long fixated on this issue - the never-ending story of human history. Consistent with his minimalist style, Barelkowski’s Exodus series outlines silhouettes, shadows, figures with their belongings moving in single file across an endless landscape. A single line delineates the horizon. Below the horizon is one colour above it, another. The symbol of the ladder often appears in Barelkowski’s work and in this series, it hovers above or below the horizon offering a path that seems to go unnoticed by the travellers. With a subtle change of colours and a shift in the placement of the horizon, the mood changes - the landscape feels like another time, another place. This story, this exodus has no beginning and no end.

Flores' personal experience with migration leads to an intimate exploration. His ongoing work comments on the diverse scope of the condition of migration addressing the physical and emotional vagrancy associated with transitional states. He often presents characters wandering on layered landscapes, appearing to occupy their own universe, merging with nature, lingering in a constant state of flux. At times, he describes his characters as drifters, situated in no specific environment or time but rather migrating between physical states, characterized by a sense of dislocation.