Photomontages Xania

A solo exhibition presenting photographic montages of buildings, people, and scenes in Crete. Emerging from a period of unexpected change, Photomontages explored Basil Alkazzi’s use of photography in the mid-1980s. In the spring of 1985, an injury to his right arm left Alkazzi unable to paint. During this period, he found inspiration in Hockney Paints the Stage at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as in Val Telberg’s surreal photomontages produced through a negative process, and Ray K. Metzker’s photocollage composites, including A Maze (Philadelphia) and California Street . He subsequently turned to photography and photomontage, a medium he continued to explore in the years that followed. The resulting photomontage works were exhibited at Drian Galleries, London, in 1986, and at Sherkat Gallery, New York, in 1987. In 1988, Alkazzi published Portraits: Strangers No Longer Strangers, Now Acquaintances, Friends, Lovers… Photomontages by Basil Alkazzi with the New England Center for Contemporary Art. The exhibition coincided with Mystic Dreamscapes at the Schiller-Wapner Gallery in up-town New York.