Theodore:Art is pleased to present “Contact!” an exhibition of work by Peter Krashes, including gouache on paper paintings informed by Krashes’ fifteen years as a community organizer in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. This ongoing body of work was spotlighted in a 2017 overview at James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center.

Some works in the show are also featured in the online project “Wall to Wall” on Topic.com, wherein Krashes parallels his artwork with the muralist Anton Refregier’s WPA project “The History of California” at the Rincon Center in San Francisco.

The new works in “Contact!” are all narrowly focused on outdoor activities in the street within a few adjacent blocks, and capture a range of activities, from face painting to a media camera pointed at an advertisement for real estate. Barclays Center and a large 22-acre real estate project called Pacific Park are in an area of Prospect Heights that is hotly contested by local community and market-driven interests. In order to go about daily life in an organic way, residents must negotiate the often rigid agendas of powerful commercial concerns. The works in “Contact!” juxtapose images of immediate personal human interactions with visual evidence of separation - fences, walls, and police lines. Some efforts draw people together. Others are designed to keep them apart. Krashes’ painting focuses on some of the broader themes of his advocacy like the beauty of empowering others, and the frustration of advocacy aimed to shape government decision-making.

Peter Krashes lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford (1987) and Middlebury College (1985). Along with the James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, solo exhibitions include University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL; Theodore: Art, Brooklyn, NY; Coop, Nashville, TN; Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY; and White Columns, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, NY; and Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris, France. He has taught in numerous places such as Cooper Union School of Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and American University. Krashes is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant. Reviews of his work have appeared in the New York Times, Time Out New York, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and the New Yorker. For the last eleven years his comm