Peter Abrahams and Martin Streit

About

Martin Streit (Cologne) and Peter Abrahams (London) are both visual based artists. Both have worked extensively in the fields of painting, photography and drawing.

On the paintings of Martin Streit, the motif present in his images is relatively unspectacular. The arsenal of objects upon which Streit plays out his artistic ambitions consists of balls, bowls, figures and architecture. Similarly to Streit, Abrahams has been involved in a photographic scrutiny of common objects and substances for almost ten years. The materials in question have been acquired in charity shops and pound stores, found at the side of the road and stumbled upon in common areas of studio buildings.

There is a dialogue between looking, performing and recording in both artists work. While Streit both in his paintings and photographs allows colour and light to transform bodies and objects. Especially in his Camera Obscura photographs bodies and objects change their appearance and solid structures are transformed into biomorphic phenomena. Abrahams’ still-life genre is peculiar in that the artist can move the objects around and so manipulate the subject, as well as alter the composition through changing the viewpoint. This is a meditative procedure and akin to the creative process itself – liable to overwork, self-consciousness, sketchiness or a rare, unpredictable profundity.

At the same time, Martin’s dispute between painting and photography brings back memories of reality and simultaneously evades any kind of realistic representation. His paintings offer their own truth; a truth that reinvents itself each instance of viewing.

www.peterabrahams.eu
www.martinstreit.net