The artist Peter Böhnisch, who grew up in the Allgäu region and now lives in Berlin, makes images. However, the works shown in Friedrichshafen are, in the classical sense, not painted images. While Böhnisch does work with color here, he primarily engages with materials: wood, wax, and sand. In this way, relief images emerge whose physical presence makes the encounter with them a very bodily experience. The image appears as a physical object—and as an embodiment of its maker. It demands a bodily reception from its viewers. A crucial aspect in this context is the absence—or at least the disruption—of the familiar, distancing perspective. One might even speak of an “incorporation” of the viewer. The associated loss of distance compels an active engagement. Only in this way does artistic relevance emerge.

Böhnisch’s image worlds are mostly both figurative and narrative. His formal, material, and visual language is shaped by an almost childlike simplicity. The paradox: this resulting directness in no way leads to quick or one-dimensional recognition. Böhnisch’s images present their viewers with resistance. Not resistance in the sense of difficulty. In a certain way, they always remain simple. Resistance more in the sense of a tension that persists—or even increases—with continued viewing. For the ‘experienced’ viewer of contemporary art, there is an added, not insignificant sense of opposition: art like this isn’t supposed to be made anymore! But it can be—and Peter Böhnisch must make art precisely this way. It seems that he is always concerned with the basic conditions of his and our conditio humana. Peter Böhnisch himself says: “I want to come into contact with something that is always there. Something that many people might long for and that has to do with things one can’t explain. Maybe one could also call it joy, even though my pictures are not purely joyful.”

At the beginning of the exhibition, the Kunstverein presents two wooden works like a foreword, and a small group of wax pieces on the mezzanine as a kind of afterword. At the center, however, is Peter Böhnisch’s latest body of work, in which he approaches—through complete simplicity—the origins of all human image-making: the drawing of a head. Böhnisch draws with his fingers in sand. These heads are not portraits of others, nor self-portraits of the artist. They become a fundamentally charged counterpart for the viewer. This series of heads is being shown for the first time at Kunstverein Friedrichshafen, simultaneously with a parallel exhibition at Peter Böhnisch’s gallery, Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.

Peter Böhnisch
Born in 1977 in Waiblingen, lives and works in Berlin
1999–2005 Studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe with Prof. Andreas Slominski and Anselm Reyle

Selected solo exhibitions
2014 Granum sinapis, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
2013 Joie, Claude Monet Foundation, Giverny, France | Eis in der Sonne, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland
2012 Peter Böhnisch, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
2011 Kanisfluh, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
2010 Gartenstraße 5, Bremerhaven | AbaB Projekte, Düsseldorf
2009 Neues aus der Löwengrube, Städtische Galerie Waldkraiburg
2008 Works on Paper, Kunsthalle Bremerhaven | Humus, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin
2007 Ferenbalm-Gurbrü Station, Karlsruhe
2006 Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin | Ich liebe Dich, Showroom Berlin

Curator: Jörg van den Berg