Peter Piller
Archive Peter Piller
January 11 - February 10, 2007

Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present Archive Peter Piller, German artist Peter Piller's first New York solo exhibition. As the title states, this exhibition of inkjet reproductions of found and appropriated photos is drawn from Piller's extensive image archive. The archive contains tens of thousands of press images that Piller started to collect while employed at an advertising agency. His job was to ensure that their ads were properly placed within regional newspapers. However, the numbing task of endlessly scanning publications day in and day out became engaging when Piller started to clip and organize images from the newspapers.

Archive Peter Piller contains a mixture of groupings from categories that emerged in the process of sorting these images, and it is through these categories that Piller's poignant and quietly tragic vision of everyday life becomes apparent. Yet, the meaningful moments were unintended by the original photographer. Piller says they're 'the kind of photographs that the photographer who took them can't even remember. They're shot one day, printed the next, and garbage the morning after'.

The exhibition contains selections from Archive categories such as "Policemen Searching," "Vandalism," and "Projection Areas," which is a series of newspaper images that depict ambiguous desolate spaces, which the artists has chosen based on their potential for open interpretation, despite their original context as illustrations for topical newspaper articles.

Archive Peter Piller also contains photos from his More Beautiful from Above series. This is a series of aerial photos of suburban homes in West Germany that were given to Piller by a firm that was hoping to sell the prints back to the homeowners, but failed (which they were planning on discarding). Piller subsequently archived and categorized the images into striking series such as homes that were built next to graveyards, and homes that were captured mid-carwash.

Peter Piller won the Bâlose Art Prize for his ArtStatement at ArtBasel 2006, and has exhibited widely at museums and galleries internationally including Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, The Netherlands, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Frehrking Wiesehöfer, Cologne, Barbara Wien, Berlin, and ProjectSD, Barcelona. He also has upcoming exhibitions at Kunstverein Salzburg, Austria and Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland.

Archive Peter Piller will be on view from January 11 ¥ February 10, 2007. A reception will be held for the artist at 525 West 22nd Street on January 11th from 6-8 pm. For information call 212-741-8849.