Peter Downsbrough

Opening: Thursday 3 July, 6 – 9 PM

Zander Galerie Paris is honored to announce its upcoming exhibition revisiting The PS1 – Special Project by Peter Downsbrough. Originally conceived in 1980 for an exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York, this project marked one of Downsbrough’s earliest exhibitions incorporating photography. Through a dialogue between what the artist describes as “photographs which look at a situation” and the architecture they are placed in, the work invites viewers to reconsider the interplay between space, light, and the urban environment.

Peter Downsbrough (1940, New Brunswick, N.J., USA – 2024, Brussels, Belgium) was a pioneering multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompassed sculpture, photography, film, work on paper, and books. His work engages in a nuanced dialogue between architectural forms and words. Deeply rooted in conceptual art and visual poetry, his work consistently interrogates how we perceive and navigate space, both real and represented. A hallmark of his artistic practice are lines and short link words – and, or, as, if, now – taking the form of physical objects or wall paintings. Positioned in an exhibition space or environment they subtly shift viewers’ spatial awareness.

The PS1 – Special Project was one of Downsbrough’s first exhibitions using photographs. The artist started taking photographs New York City in the second part of the 1970s in stark black and white images. Combining a seemingly documentary approach with a reduced formal language, the works offer a compelling representation of urban space, evoking both minimalism and conceptual art. “The photographs which look at a situation and are placed together on a wall/walls of the room,”Downsbrough wrote in the original press release, highlighting the reflexive layers of his work. At MoMA PS1, two groups of three photographs each were installed on opposite walls, while one large photograph of a lamppost in an almost deserted street was placed alone on a wall facing two windows. Two vertical lines of black tape were placed on one of the windowpanes, casting shadows across the room. This intervention created a dynamic interaction of light and shadow that unfolded in real time between the elements in the exhibition. The exhibition at Zander Galerie Paris recreates this spatial dialogue, adapting the original concept to the gallery’s architecture and offering a renewed encounter with Downsbrough‘s seminal early work.

Peter Downsbrough’s work is included in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery Library in London, the MACBA in Barcelona, the MAMCO in Geneva, and the S.M.A.K. in Ghent.

Press release (French)