Peter Piller. Erscheinungen

Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce Erscheinungen, Peter Piller’s third solo exhibition at the gallery.

Since initiating Archiv Peter Piller in 1998, Piller’s practice has consistently investigated the cultural tendencies that shape the way images are made. Culling photographs from regional newspapers and magazines, his works explore the latent relationships between disparate images. In recent years, Piller’s focus has turned towards depictions of the female form, in both analog and digital media, as an object of desire.

The works in Erscheinungen (or Appearances), which comprise the majority of the exhibition, continue this interest, but mark a departure from archival material. Tracking semi-trailer trucks in Germany that feature advertising images of women, Piller photographed these at gas stations and rest stops during countless trips between Hamburg and Liepzig. Digitally removing textual elements, a strategy common to his practice, the resulting large-format images depict these women without context. Without advertising slogans to ground them, the exaggerated poses and expressions of these figures are left lost and out of place.

Presented in the center of the gallery is Kraft, 2010, which also highlights Piller’s impulse to collect images. On repeated car trips between Liepzig and Hamburg, Piller photographed a single sign for the corporation of the same name. Displayed on a slide carousel, as they rotate the image moves in and out of focus, from day to night, and season to season.

Recent solo exhibition of Peter Piller’s work include the extenstive survey Belegkontrolle, originating at Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2014, and has since traveled to Centre de la Photographie Genève, 2014 Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, 2015, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, 2015, and Kunsthaus Wien, 2015. Other solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2011, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2009, the Kunsthaus Glarus, 2007, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam, 2005/06. Peter Piller has published his ten-volume series of artist’s books Archiv Peter Piller as well as other artist’s books and catalogues by Revolver Publishing.