PETER PILLER

"LEISTUNGSSCHAU"
03.09.-06.11.2010

"A Leistungsschau [Display of prowess] bursts with pride and can possibly only offer something
which is interesting to a small group of people, whereas all the others turn away, shaking their
heads." Artistic prowess can be achieved through intense training or by getting enough sleep."
Peter Piller

In KRAFT*, the first slide projection in his work, Peter Piller shows us 40 different views
of how he tried to take a photograph of a food company´s huge logo at exactly the same
place on the way to work by car from Hamburg to the Art Academy in Leipzig and back.
Although taken at the same place, the photos vary considerably, the hand-held camera is
dictated by chance and by the time of day or of the year, the speed of the vehicle or the
artist’s span of attention.

Through the image sequence and the short intervals between the slides, KRAFT is
turned into a concept which is suggestive, yet lacking in context, taking a photograph
becomes a ritual, it is only during the selection of images that Peter Piller appears as an
autonomous, active person again.

In the 21 pigment prints contained in HINTERGRUNDFARBE (Background Color) - at
times similar to KRAFT - Peter Piller’s interest is directed at a particular moment, which
appears briefly as an actual picture in the live stream of a sex webcam, and can only be
made visible by being captured technically by the artist as a still picture.
With sex or porno-cams in the internet each woman changes her outfit after the first
contact is made between the customer and "service provider". The chat-room can
sometimes be recognized as a room for a split second, before the person returns to the
picture.
The prints installed in the gallery show gaudy colour surfaces, now and then the coarse
pixels allow details of the room to be identified.
Thus Peter Piller has found the answer to his original question about the architecture of
chat-rooms in almost abstract colour surfaces, which turn into visual synonyms of spatial
non-information.

The search for personal happiness or the fulfilment of desires as a phenomenon is
presented by Peter Piller in the third group of works titled KÄLTESENDUNG (Cold
Mailing).

Christmas and New Year cards from different decades collected over a number of years
and all showing black and white images of fir trees and winter forests deep in snow, have
been scanned by Piller and arranged on the wall in groups of enlarged pigment prints.

As a serial installation of more or less ideal winter clichés, KÄLTESENDUNG presents
the complete spectrum of picture symbolism, from the hostile, frozen forest landscape to
the – invisible – good wishes for the next year.
The group of works A40 BOCHUM DÜCKERWEG presented by Peter Piller on ten
simple tables shows for the first time as a room installation the results of his month-long
research into the recreation activities and ways of life of the inhabitants in the direct
neighbourhood of a section of the Ruhr Region A40 Motorway in Bochum. Piller took
photographs and made drawings in and around the allotment gardens on the north side
of a motorway noise barrier as well as on the site of the largest German car-tuning centre
directly opposite on the south side of the A40.
In connection with the exhibition project "B1/A40 – The beauty of the great road”, where
works by 18 artists are presented in various places along the A40 from June to August,
Piller shows the works he has selected as large-scale posters and billboards, hanging “in
the wrong place”. Therefore the pictures from the allotments are shown on the cartuner’s
property, and the car-tuner images are hung in the allotments and along the noise
barrier.
In the gallery Piller is presenting the complete group of works as 42 small-format colour
photographs and 14 ink and pencil drawings in A4 size on two rows of five tables
standing opposite each other and divided by a wall, corresponding to the situation in
which they were made.
As a matter of course the drawings communicate with each other, which, in the manner
of earlier “Memory drawings” by Peter Piller, combine the topographical with elements
associated to them through the photographer’s subtle observation of details.

* (German: power, endurance, strength)

PETER PILLER

NIMMT SCHADEN (2007) / WAREHOUSE
03.09.-06.11.2010

In the WAREHOUSE on the Bonner Strasse 488 a parallel exhibition by Peter Piller shows at the
same time the first overall presentation of NIMMT SCHADEN, a group of works from 2007.

As a result of the BALOISE-Art Award given by the Baloise Insurance group to Peter Piller in
2006, he was invited to investigate the photographs of damage stored by the insurance company.
Piller selected 60 images according to his typical criteria. They often don’t clearly disclose the
extent of the damage, but oscillate back and forth between photographic beauty and conceptual
puzzles. At the same time Piller reveals the quest for perfection in a jaded central European
society with a touch of wry humour.

A publication with 48 illustrations of A40 BOCHUM DÜCKERWEG has been published in the
ARCHIV PETER PILLER MATERIALIEN series by Nieves.
We will gladly provide you with press images for both exhibitions on request.