1st Anniversary Exhibition - Convivium33 Gallery at Josaphat Arts Hall in cooperation with the Bonfoey Gallery presents: CHRISTOPHER PEKOC- EVOLUTION 1964-2006

Christopher Pekoc, whose mural Night Sky in the main hall of the downtown Public Library is a Cleveland landmark, will be staging a major retrospective [that charts the technical and expressive evolution of his work over the last four decades and that highlights the ways in which photography has remained a constant creative stimulus for his work.] The exhibition, at Convivium33 Gallery in Cleveland will feature over 40 years of work as well as major pieces that have not been seen in decades, such as his grand-scale Kent (State) Triptych, based on his eyewitness experience of the shooting of unarmed student protesters by the National Guard in 1970.

Over the last twenty years, Pekoc’s unusual mixture of photography and other media has quietly attracted the attention of an international group of discriminating photography collectors. Pekoc’s father, grandfather and great grandfather were in the hardware business in Cleveland, and Pekoc attributes his interest in the art of assemblage to the early exposure to tools and construction projects he received in his father’s store. In his cramped studio, Pekoc works with photographs that he has taken himself, or clipped from magazines, and which he scratches, crumples, sands, and coats with paint, varnish, and shellac, before cutting them up and stitching them together in unusual configurations. In an essay on Pekoc’s assemblages in 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography, photography historian John Wood and editor of 21st has compared their effect to the “shimmering mosaics of Ravenna” and “the paintings of Gustav Klimt,” while noting that their process of cutting and stitching suggests “a metaphor for the psychological repair and stitching back together of the self.”

Pekoc is represented by the Bonfoey Gallery in Cleveland, OH for 30 years and the John Stevenson Gallery in New York City, NY. In 2002 his work was featured in a limited edition publication, 21st The Journal of Contemporary Photography, Vol. V, titled Strange Genius (2002) featuring new directions in photography. Pieces by him are in major public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Czech Center of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. Many Clevelanders will remember him for the award-winning pieces he has shown in seven May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as for work by him that was selected for the 1994 Invitational at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dana Gioia, poet and critic declared, “The first time I saw Christopher Pekoc’s work, I knew I was in the presence of a powerful and original artist. His work is in equal parts beautiful and unsettling.” Tom Hinson, Curator of Photography, and former Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, who has followed Pekoc’s work since the early 1970s, praises Pekoc’s work for its “formal beauty, technical excellence, and emotional resonance,” and ranks him as “one of the northeast Ohio’s most distinguished artists.”

Curated by Henry Adams, a Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University and former curator of American Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Adams is an award-winning art historian and author of more than 200 publications on American Art. The show will be accompanied by a catalogue written by Henry Adams, “There’s something dark, tough and roughly textured about Pekoc’s work that captures the creative essence of Cleveland,” he notes. “His imagery is both repressed and intensely sensual.”

Convivium33 Gallery has received awards from both the AIA Cleveland, American Institute of Architects and the Cleveland Restoration Society.

Exhibit dates: December 8, 2006- January 21, 2007

Opening Reception:
Friday, December 8 from 6pm –10:30pm

Convivium33 Gallery 1433 East 33rd Street
216.881.7838

Gallery Hours: Daily by appointment
Saturdays and Sundays -10:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.

Special Opening Night LIVE Performance:
Friday, December 8,2006 in Convivium at 8pm
Antiphonies for a Severed Head
Composed by Dana McCormick
Performed by Cleveland Musicians

for additional info
www.bonfoey.com

Location