Peter Gnass was born in Germany and attended the Hamburg Academy of Fine Art and the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, then specialized in printmaking under Dumouchel. In 1970, he presented his first solo exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Topolog. During his career, he has had regular exhibitions in Canada and abroad, and he has produced a number of works of public art. In 1967, he created a bronze mural for the lobby of Théâtre Maisonneuve de Montréal, and in 1978 he created a large stainless-steel mural for the LaSalle Métro station.
Artwork description
The artwork is on the second storey of the Bibliothèque de Pointe-aux-Trembles and covers both wall and floor. The installation is composed of three parts: a photograph, a sculpture, and a series of two-dimensional forms.
The colour photograph portrays an old, small wood armoire, seen from a low angle and slightly obliquely. It is affixed to the wall above the sculpture, which is made from the armoire that was photographed, but it has been deconstructed, cut out, then reconstructed. The sculpture is placed on a low stand made of light-coloured wood. Finally, the series of three two-dimensional shapes illustrates the anamorphic possibilities of the sculpture. They are presented on the wall to the right of the photograph. As in a game, the viewer is engaged in finding the precise point of view that makes the shapes inscribed on the wall visible. Peter Gnass has been interested in anamorphoses for more than thirty years. He sees them as a means of combining the intellectual and the aesthetic.