Peter Sabat’s approach to painting combines everyday subject matter with representations of its underlying complexity, in small canvases to large figurative tableaux. Using expressive painterly techniques and a methodical, stylized process, the works merge contemporary and historical elements, facts with phenomena, in uneasy arrangements. Found imagery exists alongside what’s created. The investigation of images ultimately documents their power both to reveal and obscure. Since the early 2000s, Sabat has also worked in film, often using music to narrate the images.

Some works were produced as series, and an explanation of their sources may be useful. Others are companion pieces to film projects: California Elegies and Red Herrings (And Salt Cod), both currently in post-production. The COVID-19 pandemic looms over the most recent works, directly or obliquely. Similarly, with the umbrella of mass surveillance, which made drawings using satellite imagery possible. And, Erich von Stroheim’s incomplete epic silent film Greed (1924) and author John McPhee’s writings on geological history in Assembling California (1994), inspired another body of work in painting and film. It describes the ecstasies and tragedies of human presence in the natural environment, from the 19th century California Gold Rush to the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise.

Peter Sabat (b. 1970) is a Canadian artist who has exhibited his paintings and film projects in Canada, the United States and Europe. Born in Kitchener, Canada, Sabat received his BFA from Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) where he studied painting and film. Between 1997-2004, Sabat resided in Berlin, Germany, where he began collaborations with composers on films, operas, and art projects, including Walter Zimmermann, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Marc Sabat and Thomas Meadowcroft. His works have been shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, KNM Berlin’s HouseMusik, the MaerzMusik festival and the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Goethe-Institut, and at Carnegie Hall as part of the Berlin in Lights festival in New York. He is currently working on several film and visual art projects, including a celebration of the late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. After residing in Newfoundland, Canada and in northern California, he’s now based in Los Angeles.