Peter Piller – Spekulationen (I)

The subject of this and the following books in the Spekulationen series is Peter Piller’s approach to Stone Age art and its presence in his daily life. This volume presents four hundred and nine photographs found in publications on prehistoric art for contemplation, understanding, conjecture, incomprehension and misunderstanding.

Peter Piller has been working with found images, photography and drawing since the 1990s. Ever since working at a newspaper press clipping service as an art student in Hamburg, Piller has concerned himself with the collection of visual material and its subsequent re-contextualisation into thematic series, in order to give it new meaning and dimensions. To this day, the Peter Piller Archive has grown to thousands of images — its sources including a commercial aerial photography archive, images from the internet as well as historical postcards. Informed by his perceptive observations and subtle sense of humour, this archive is constantly and meticulously rearranged to represent new associative formations that offer insightful perspectives on the activities and rituals of daily life. The wide spectrum of subject matter ranges from the depiction of (cultural) landscapes, people touching cars or looking into holes, to the juxtaposition of traditional role models, protest signs, trained dogs and much more.

416 pages, 15.5 x 20.5 cm, softcover, Nieves (Zurich).