Sholem Krishtalka: Excerpts from the Lurking Drawings

Krishtalka is a painter and writer. His art has been shown most at Paul Petro Contemporary Art and the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto; most recently he made a solo debut in New York City at Jack the Pelican Presents.

Krishtalka’s work is a deconstruction of his life. It documents his relationships, mapping his life and community. In that sense, these drawings function equally as autobiography: friends (both intimate and extremely casual) and lovers are all represented here. While it may seem initially voyeuristic, Lurking is much more a document of the artist’s life than those he portrays.

The artist explains that, “The wide usage of Facebook has borne a new vernacular meaning for the verb ‘to lurk.’ In this new coinage, ‘to lurk someone’ is to troll through their Facebook photos, to investigate their visual history, in some sense to stalk them.”