Peter Zimmermann
19 Nov 2009 - 28 Jan 2010
PETER ZIMMERMANN
From November 19th 2009 to January 28th 2010
In 1995, when Peter Zimmermann (Freiburg, Germany, 1956) sent some images to London so that he could start working with them on his arrival at the British capital, a mistake in the electronic processing caused his artistic career to take a completely new turn. The computer archives got mixed, and this machine error opened new possibilities for him to treat his photographs taken from real contexts. Since then, Zimmermann has worked with figurative images that he alters to render abstract surfaces, enhancing the seduction ability inherent to pictorial materials. His images found from reality were a first step, a little excuse in order to create a new world in which matter did not stumble: the paint walks on the canvas like oil, asking permission from the adjoining colours to open its way and find a place on the canvas surface.
The mechanical transformation of figurative images into peaceful strata of several patinas saturated with pigments that are reflected on each other is one of the reasons why no painting by Peter Zimmermann could ever be confused with any other painted by another artist. Dense paint gouaches, liquid forms with blurred contours, images in slight motion, strongly opaque overlapped layers. Through his reliance on that fortuitous London mistake, Zimmermann has pointed out a way of placing himself in the ample and diverse platform of today’s pictorial assets. By disclosing an absence of narrative and the technique used during the last eleven years, he has transformed an error into a plastic means of survival. Starting with Remix (1995), and particularly since 1998, his visual thirst feeds on the computer machine's successful wrong-doings; he works with curve lines, random shapes and meandering colour blends, rendering with each work an original and distinctive signature. Mechanically-painted canvas, surfaces that act as spreads, dense sheets of bright, changeable and unforeseeable tones. Until the day of the mechanical failure and the chance guess captured on the uptake – that idea offered by the machine – Zimmermann had used objects like cardboard, books, logotypes and texts in which the content was entwined with the surface, hinting at a preference for concealing from our eyes a part of the work. Eleven years ago, the act of concealing the container became a disposition to cover his canvasses with no semantic or subliminal information whatsoever.
Peter Zimmermann ’s exhibition at Distrito 4 Gallery gathers the epoxy resin based works altered by digital means he has done in the last year. The only piece displayed that is not part of his current work, entitled Souvenir 2 (2007), is also the only free-standing piece: a bright blob placed directly on the floor like a big sofa. Related to the rectangular format usually found in his work, the resin drops drawn on the gallery wall (Untitled, drips) appear as special main features. Halfway between a wordless graffiti and a bas-relief in dripping style, his pigmented resin seems to have escaped from some of the nearby paintings.
Two traits are often present in Zimmermann’s work: the technique employed and an understanding of painting as a two-dimensional means of seduction. On the one hand, templates are scanned and printed on a slide, and projected on the canvas, on which the resin is then poured. On the other hand, the insistence on a compelling quality of the image, and the obviousness of a chromatic saturated surface, brings his work near a certain notion of lewdness. We can talk about emptiness and explosion at once, about a feast of multiple colours, curves and a brightness that refers to the visual organ as the chief agent in the act of seduction in painting.
From November 19th 2009 to January 28th 2010
In 1995, when Peter Zimmermann (Freiburg, Germany, 1956) sent some images to London so that he could start working with them on his arrival at the British capital, a mistake in the electronic processing caused his artistic career to take a completely new turn. The computer archives got mixed, and this machine error opened new possibilities for him to treat his photographs taken from real contexts. Since then, Zimmermann has worked with figurative images that he alters to render abstract surfaces, enhancing the seduction ability inherent to pictorial materials. His images found from reality were a first step, a little excuse in order to create a new world in which matter did not stumble: the paint walks on the canvas like oil, asking permission from the adjoining colours to open its way and find a place on the canvas surface.
The mechanical transformation of figurative images into peaceful strata of several patinas saturated with pigments that are reflected on each other is one of the reasons why no painting by Peter Zimmermann could ever be confused with any other painted by another artist. Dense paint gouaches, liquid forms with blurred contours, images in slight motion, strongly opaque overlapped layers. Through his reliance on that fortuitous London mistake, Zimmermann has pointed out a way of placing himself in the ample and diverse platform of today’s pictorial assets. By disclosing an absence of narrative and the technique used during the last eleven years, he has transformed an error into a plastic means of survival. Starting with Remix (1995), and particularly since 1998, his visual thirst feeds on the computer machine's successful wrong-doings; he works with curve lines, random shapes and meandering colour blends, rendering with each work an original and distinctive signature. Mechanically-painted canvas, surfaces that act as spreads, dense sheets of bright, changeable and unforeseeable tones. Until the day of the mechanical failure and the chance guess captured on the uptake – that idea offered by the machine – Zimmermann had used objects like cardboard, books, logotypes and texts in which the content was entwined with the surface, hinting at a preference for concealing from our eyes a part of the work. Eleven years ago, the act of concealing the container became a disposition to cover his canvasses with no semantic or subliminal information whatsoever.
Peter Zimmermann ’s exhibition at Distrito 4 Gallery gathers the epoxy resin based works altered by digital means he has done in the last year. The only piece displayed that is not part of his current work, entitled Souvenir 2 (2007), is also the only free-standing piece: a bright blob placed directly on the floor like a big sofa. Related to the rectangular format usually found in his work, the resin drops drawn on the gallery wall (Untitled, drips) appear as special main features. Halfway between a wordless graffiti and a bas-relief in dripping style, his pigmented resin seems to have escaped from some of the nearby paintings.
Two traits are often present in Zimmermann’s work: the technique employed and an understanding of painting as a two-dimensional means of seduction. On the one hand, templates are scanned and printed on a slide, and projected on the canvas, on which the resin is then poured. On the other hand, the insistence on a compelling quality of the image, and the obviousness of a chromatic saturated surface, brings his work near a certain notion of lewdness. We can talk about emptiness and explosion at once, about a feast of multiple colours, curves and a brightness that refers to the visual organ as the chief agent in the act of seduction in painting.