Retro Focus

About Retro Focus

Comprised of 22000 pieces of individually hand whittled square dowls and over fifteen different species of wood - maple, oak, white cedar, red cedar, tulipwood, pine, spruce, bass wood, tamarack, Douglas fir, mahogany, ash, different types of tropical work, and black ebony - Retro Focus is a brilliant collision of hard-edge abstraction and Arts and Crafts stylistic movements. Created over the span of ten years, Retro Focus breathes new life into the tenets of high Modernism: here the form is the content, and the content is the form. The variation in the texture and tonality of the wooden dowls blurs the geometry of the form inviting the gaze to soften and take in the novelty of the play between hard and soft that this wood wall sculpture achieves.
Peter Mennacher (1942 - 2021) was born in Bavaria and raised in Munich, Germany, where he studied law. He worked as a lawyer for 21 years before moving to Canada with his family in 1992, and because he specialized in tax and art, he had quite a clientele of artists. In the 70s one of his clients, the well-known art professor Nicolai Sarafov, taught him the most difficult of printing techniques - etching. They became fast friends and remained close.
Peter was always interested in the arts and as a teenager did lots of drawings, paintings, monoprints, and linocuts. After moving to Canada and opening BLIZZMAX gallery and studio in 1993, he also took up wood carving and sculpting.