The Art Gallery of Sudbury is pleased to present the first-ever North American exhibition of work by German photographer Marcus Schwier. Comprising 26 individual works, the exhibition explores the theme of landscape ­ both urban and countrified. Schwier captures his imagery using a unique pinhole photographic process and hand built cameras.

The following is an excerpt from the catalogue essay written by David Galloway:

"Schwier's multifarious themes range from lighthouses on Sylt to glaciers in Iceland, from fields of blossoming rape in Germany or cactuses on the island of Gran Canaria all the way to scurrying feet in an American shopping center. Recently the artist has taken as a theme the distorted scenarios visible in convex traffic-mirrors, as well as the riddlesome "hieroglyphs" which the silhouette of construction cranes spell out against the sky."

The technical means employed here seem just as diverse: a pinhole camera developed by the artist himself, a descendant of the camera obscura that played a decisive role in classical painting, enjoys equality with infra-red technology and wide-angled lenses. Frequently the same motifs are recorded in different ways ­ in black-and-white and in color, as detail studies and panoramas. Even for the "simple" pinhole camera, the artist always keeps different sorts of film in different formats handy when he is under way. "One can never know in advance," he stresses, "with what means the best results can be achieved."

Marcus Schwier is a graduate of Duesseldorf University (Germany) and with further studies at Duesseldorf Kunstakademie. He has worked as a freelance fine art and commercial photographer since 1994 and is represented in several private and public collections. Schwier lives and works in Duesseldorf (Germany).

David Galloway is an American art critic and free-lance curator based in Wuppertal (Germany).

Information: 705-675-4871 or gallery@artsudbury.org