Peter Bialobrzeski  Lost in Transition 

Peter Bialobrzeski’s third exhibition at Laurence Miller Gallery will feature 6 large-scale
color works from his recent series, Lost in Transition.  Continuing his decade-long search
for beauty and meaning in a rapidly industrializing world, Bialobrzeski focuses his large format camera on landscapes that are in the middle of being recreated, and celebrates in glorious color and glowing light places that are desolate and uninviting  This contradiction produces images that suggest a festival atmosphere while describing isolation and dehumanization. The long exposures required by these mostly nighttime images create ghost-like and other-worldly scenarios which are rooted in reality by the presence of naked trees, people lingering in the shadows, and other evidence of man’s inescapable presence.  By choosing not to specifically identify their locations, he points out the universal nature of these conditions.

Transition 23, 2005 reveals a large odd-shaped glowing building featuring a sign declaring GRAND MALL hovering over the remains of a shanty town, a powerful reminder that progress often inflicts pain. Transition 52, 2005 features a red and black Rothko-like industrial facade glowing like a pair of designer sunglasses, seductive but revealing nothing of what is concealed within.

Peter Bialobrzeski was born in Wolfsburg, Germany in 1961.  He studied politics at the University of Braunschweig , followed by studies in photography and design at the Folkwangschule, University of Essen.  He has published four monographs thus far: Lost in Transition, Heimat, Neon Tigers and XXX Holy-Journeys into the Spiritual Heart of India.  His photographs have been widely collected and exhibited, most recently at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City in the exhibition Man/Nature: Recent European Landscape Photography.