Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present Undefined Lines, a new project by Peter Piller in the gallery's online viewing room.
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. This new body of work reflects Piller's research into publications from the 1950s to 1970s of paleolithic research and excavation, with a focus on the documentation of Cave Paintings found in Southern France. As each image contains both symbols that have been interpreted and those that have not been, the project quickly forms an open-ended meditation on the ability of marks and symbols to communicate in art. This is furthered by Piller's focus on mistakes or technical errors found in each image, as they were taken for didactic rather than artistic purposes. Recontextualized, these imperfections become their own vocabulary, further separating the image from its original purpose. Piller additionally incorporates other photographs from other sources, such as a documentary image of a snail, that is transformed to represent the red marks often found in caves that remain undeciphered, but their prevalence suggests that they carry a pragmatic function. Furthered by Piller's own inventions of cropping, shifting scale, and collage, the resulting works highlight the ambiguous nature of these images - when isolated, a skull photographed against a black background, suggests the surface of the moon, or another foreign topography, suggesting the ability of these otherwise "direct" images to elicit divergent meanings or ideas.
Peter Piller (b. 1968) lives and works in Hamburg. Piller's work is currently included in While everyone is taking pictures, some can be engaged in photography, on view through November 21 at Fotohof, Salzburg. Beginning at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, from 2014–2016 his touring exhibition Belegkontrolle was shown at the Centre de la Photographie Genève, the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, the Kunsthalle Nürnberg and the Kunst Haus Wien. Other important solo exhibitions include Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich (2019), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Museum Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen (both 2018); then Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2011); the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2009); the Kunsthaus Glarus (2007); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2005/2006) and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen (2003).