Twenty-two years in Antwerp couldn’t unravel Langer’s dystopia: like most of Langer’s creations, "Windows to the City" is harried and claustrophobic, an uneasy 77-inch by 77-inch unity of 25 autonomous pieces. The work, along with more than 15 others by Langer, — photos that are manipulated with painting and mounted on aluminum — will soon be on display at the Mark Gallery in Englewood.

Entitled "Journeys of the Spirit," the Langer exhibition will open with a special reception on Thursday, May 15, at 6 p.m. The artist will be at the gallery until May 25, and his work will hang there until June 26. Directions, hours, and a sneak preview of Langer’s work are available at mark-gallery.com.

Arielle Mark, who owns the Mark Gallery, met Langer at an expo where his work was being displayed. She invited him to present his pieces at her gallery, and the two have been busily devising a way to stage his pieces, a process made complex because much of his work is made of multiple parts.

"What is interesting about Peter Langer’s work is a lot of the pieces are fragmented, so they may consist of nine or 12 elements, so it’s a little bit different in hanging it," said Mark, who is originally from Germany.

"Most of the pieces are on the larger side," she said, noting that many are photographs mounted on aluminum. "They run from 3 by 3 feet up to 6 by 7 feet."

The Mark Gallery opened in November of last year, when Mark discontinued her law career. The gallery, though still in its infancy, already boasts an impressive resumé, with commissioned portrait artists including Lois Woolley, Mia Bergeron, and Salvador Gomez. The current featured artist is the French-born Dominique Caron, whose placid still-lifes contrast sharply with Langer’s urgent work.

"I call my work very baroque, but it’s probably not a good term because ‘baroque’ is the term for a middle-aged era, but [I call it that because] it’s very charged," said Langer, who speaks in a deep and confident Polish roll.

"My photos are not airy, they’re very heavily charged. They’re not decoration-type photos."

Indeed, Langer’s photos are very full. "Windows to the City" is hardly as fenestrate as its name implies, with virtually every available inch swathed in color, shadow, and shape.

Judaica also plays a central role in Langer’s art, as three of the six photos available on the Mark Gallery’s Website have overt Jewish themes. "Cultural Tissue" depicts a fully lit golden menorah embalmed in eddies of white ribbon, while "History of a Small Nation" is a series of 12 furled Israeli flags.

"Basic Colors No. 1," perhaps the most compelling of the pieces, portrays unraveled tefillin strewn over nine tiles of green, red, blue, and gray.

"There is an underlying Judaic message that is important here," said Mark. "It’s not Judaic art, but it’s strongly charged by his Judaism, and I think it is important that that comes across."

Langer, who wrote plays and published poetry in Poland’s underground artistic movement, uses Jewish symbols to communicate emotions.

"I try to explain with my work what happened with Jewish history, which has influenced so deeply and so largely the rest of Western civilization’s culture," said Langer.

"The Jewish philosophy, the Jewish law, the Jewish concept of how to [approach] life was very, very successful, and imported by the other civilizations."

Though Langer claims he is "not really influence-able," he said most of his favorite artists hail from American expressionism, though it is Henri Matisse, the French fauvist/expressionist, who especially "means a lot" to him.

Langer certainly works in the expressionist vein, with a body of work that emotes with each brushstroke. He is, however, more contemporary than one might imagine, updating the traditional genre with cutting-edge technology and photography.

Langer’s work has been shown at various galleries in Budapest — including the Hungarian Jewish Museum — and also in Paris and Berlin. He’s been featured in private collections throughout Europe and America.

"My art conveys a message of conviction and doubt with faith portrayed as conviction and religion as doubt," Langer said on the Mark Gallery’s Website. "What I see is a very complex, difficult, yet very beautiful world, one in which Judaism speaks the language of postmodern art."