Peter Piller
17 Dec 2008 - 14 Feb 2009
PETER PILLER
"Swiss Landscapes"
December 17, 2008 - February 14, 2009
ProjecteSD is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of Hamburg based artist Peter Piller.
Piller systematically collects and classifies images according to aspects that may be poetic but may also underscore the utter absurdity of everyday life. Peter Piller’s picture archive project, that has been under way for more than ten years, operates as an encyclopaedia of contemporary life, full of astute observations, gravity, wit, irony and profound significance.
Peter Piller works with pictures from completely different sources. In regional newspapers, in company archives, found old postcards or the Internet, he finds pictures that he “had always wanted to make”. He looks for stereotypes in his source material as well as recurring motifs and similarities in order to produce shifts of value and meaning. By eliminating contexts and working out new connections, Peter Piller demonstrates to what extent photography is inalienably accompanied by a manifest or hidden “text”. His operations on visual material uncover the mechanisms of the construction of meaning through pictures.
If the first two presentations of Piller ́s work at ProjecteSD showed images taken mainly from the artist ́s “newspaper” archive, for his third solo show, Swiss Landscapes, Peter Piller has chosen to present a work that emerged from an already existing archive. In early 2007, Peter Piller was granted access to the digital photo archive of the Claims Department of Bâloise Insurance. Working from half a million digital photographs taken by appraisers on accident sites between 2001 and 2005, he selected 60 images that he put together in a new series entitled Nimmt Schaden (Taking claims). There is a formal diversity in the 60 colour photographs making Nimmt Schaden. In some of the images is almost impossible to identify the “accident”, the subject of the photograph; in some others it is shown at full frame. Full of multiple references, the 60 images reveal aspects, small details which certainly escaped the occasional photographers and that now, once the image is liberated from its original purpose and through the combination and reordering of the displaced materials, are the source of a new form of narrative structure. The continuous, linear diplay of the photographic set forces the observer to make new associations. Nimmt Schaden provides an intelligent, witty and humorous insight into everyday catastrophies, and an ironically peculiar view of the “Swiss landscapes”.
Peter Piller (Fritzlar, 1968) studied German language and was trained as visual artist. He was awarded the Ars Viva Prize and received the Rubens Prize from the City of Siegen in 2004. His work has been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen (2004), the Witte de With Rotterdam (2005), Ludwig Museum in Cologne (2005), and most recently at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland (2007), and the Frac Nord-Pas de Calais (2008). His work is part of important public and private collections and currently on view at the following exhibitions: The order of Things, at the Muhka, Antwerp (Belgium) where he is showing precisely the series Nimmt Schaden; Decollecting 4, De Garage, Mechelen, Bélgica; Shane Campbell gallery, Chicago, USA.
Nimmt Schaden is compiled in the book of the same title, published by JRP/Ringier and available at ProjecteSD.
Parallel to his exhibition at ProjecteSD Peter Piller will give a lecture on December 15th at 19:30 h. at the Libreria Central del Raval (Elisabets, 6, Barcelona. Tel. 902 884 990). For further information contact ProjecteSD.
"Swiss Landscapes"
December 17, 2008 - February 14, 2009
ProjecteSD is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of Hamburg based artist Peter Piller.
Piller systematically collects and classifies images according to aspects that may be poetic but may also underscore the utter absurdity of everyday life. Peter Piller’s picture archive project, that has been under way for more than ten years, operates as an encyclopaedia of contemporary life, full of astute observations, gravity, wit, irony and profound significance.
Peter Piller works with pictures from completely different sources. In regional newspapers, in company archives, found old postcards or the Internet, he finds pictures that he “had always wanted to make”. He looks for stereotypes in his source material as well as recurring motifs and similarities in order to produce shifts of value and meaning. By eliminating contexts and working out new connections, Peter Piller demonstrates to what extent photography is inalienably accompanied by a manifest or hidden “text”. His operations on visual material uncover the mechanisms of the construction of meaning through pictures.
If the first two presentations of Piller ́s work at ProjecteSD showed images taken mainly from the artist ́s “newspaper” archive, for his third solo show, Swiss Landscapes, Peter Piller has chosen to present a work that emerged from an already existing archive. In early 2007, Peter Piller was granted access to the digital photo archive of the Claims Department of Bâloise Insurance. Working from half a million digital photographs taken by appraisers on accident sites between 2001 and 2005, he selected 60 images that he put together in a new series entitled Nimmt Schaden (Taking claims). There is a formal diversity in the 60 colour photographs making Nimmt Schaden. In some of the images is almost impossible to identify the “accident”, the subject of the photograph; in some others it is shown at full frame. Full of multiple references, the 60 images reveal aspects, small details which certainly escaped the occasional photographers and that now, once the image is liberated from its original purpose and through the combination and reordering of the displaced materials, are the source of a new form of narrative structure. The continuous, linear diplay of the photographic set forces the observer to make new associations. Nimmt Schaden provides an intelligent, witty and humorous insight into everyday catastrophies, and an ironically peculiar view of the “Swiss landscapes”.
Peter Piller (Fritzlar, 1968) studied German language and was trained as visual artist. He was awarded the Ars Viva Prize and received the Rubens Prize from the City of Siegen in 2004. His work has been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen (2004), the Witte de With Rotterdam (2005), Ludwig Museum in Cologne (2005), and most recently at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland (2007), and the Frac Nord-Pas de Calais (2008). His work is part of important public and private collections and currently on view at the following exhibitions: The order of Things, at the Muhka, Antwerp (Belgium) where he is showing precisely the series Nimmt Schaden; Decollecting 4, De Garage, Mechelen, Bélgica; Shane Campbell gallery, Chicago, USA.
Nimmt Schaden is compiled in the book of the same title, published by JRP/Ringier and available at ProjecteSD.
Parallel to his exhibition at ProjecteSD Peter Piller will give a lecture on December 15th at 19:30 h. at the Libreria Central del Raval (Elisabets, 6, Barcelona. Tel. 902 884 990). For further information contact ProjecteSD.