PAT KRAUS
Ghost/Portraits

Stepdown is excited and delighted to announce its inaugural exhibition "Ghost/Portraits" by Tāmaki Makaurau photographer and musician Pat Kraus. 

Opening at 5 pm on Friday, September 22, this show presents a spectral-lensed suite of B&W portraits that offer an intimate insight into the navigation of identity, relationships and the homely. 

In the words of Pat Kraus; 

"Even the most straightforward photographic portrait is a ghostly recording of a permanently lost moment, an attempt to freeze a shadow. 

The photographs I'm most excited by are "failed" portraits, images that, by underexposure, lack of focus, brutal head-cropping, or facial obscurity, exaggerate the eeriness of the relationships between artist, subject, and viewer. 

These 17 black-and-white photographs take a variety of approaches to representing the human body. Sometimes camp and grotesque, obtuse or disarmingly direct, in my view they point to problems and complexities with my identity, chronic illness, relationships, and struggles with photography itself."

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live music performance the night after it opens, on September 23rd at Paisley Stage with local Ahuriri ufonic duo Dos-Ovni. 

A limited edition 7” lathe record will be released in conjunction with this exhibition, and all prints will be available for purchase in diptych sets.