Peter Vahlefeld
But museum officials insist that the main motivation behind this project is to foster dialogue,
not to make profits.
The canvas, a seemingly arbitrary assemblage of images, spins a multiplicity of possible readings. Peter Vahlefeld has emptied these images out of any possible meaning, through juxtaposition of pictorial ambiguity. Juxtaposed, spliced together, scanned, rescanned, photographed and re-photographed – these acts of continual reproduction distance the image even further from the subject it supposedly indexes.
Peter Vahlefeld has been interrogating the contemporary overload of museum and gallery advertisements and their relation with pictorial representation, questioning their reproduction, circulation and disappearance. Taken out of art magazines and media, this boundless source of anonymous, preexisting material is used up and transformed into paintings. With his still lifes, portraits and abstract compositions, he blurs pre-existing hierarchies between all kinds of images, aiming to go forward with the history and genre of painting as it exists in the 21st century.
The basis of the artwork is composed of different overpaintings.
The overpaintings of printed matter have been digitalized, reworked on the computer and superimposed onto one another on canvas.
The mash-up is literally mashed-up and the work vibrates with the relentless churn of popular culture. Parts of it have been printed out as pigmented Ultrachrome inkjet prints and mounted on canvas (collage) with a transparent medium UV protection.
The overpainting serves as an underpainting that loops behind expressionist brushwork.
Unlike on the computer, where the functional logic is based on described rules, the material on canvas becomes the topic as a sequence of actions—taking on an almost sculptural character.
This method is predicated upon the crossover of painting, printing and collage, and draws it actuality from the collision between the visual codes of mass media and the subjective traces of painterly expression.
The painting’s layers, individual and combined, are printed and overpainted to introduce new and ever-expanding opportunities for compositions to emerge.
Vahlefeld’s brand of painting is chaotic, and volatile, marked by abstraction of painterly brushwork and gesture; the entanglement of mark-making, color, and texture can assume an almost overwhelming effect.
His practice integrates an array of references as well as a constantly growing archive and vocabulary for self-quotation and development;
alongside images sourced from magazines, and his own overpaintings, he regularly creates his own array of techniques and tools for conveying texture, opacity, and dimensionality of his references.
Light and pigment permeate the material, further complicating perceptions of flatness and volume on the canvas.
Different varnishes as a means of producing visual effects, demonstrate a striking pivot in how qualities of light, presence, and substance are expressed.
The canvas, a seemingly arbitrary assemblage of images, spins a multiplicity of possible readings.
Peter Vahlefeld has emptied these images out of any possible meaning, through juxtaposition of pictorial ambiguity. Juxtaposed, spliced together, scanned, rescanned, photographed and re-photographed – these acts of continual reproduction distance the image even further from the subject it supposedly indexes.