Peter Piller, Archiv Peter Piller – Spekulationen (I) – Unbestimmte Linien, 2022

The theme of this and the forthcoming volumes in the ‘Spekulationen’ series is Peter Piller’s approach to Stone Age art and its presence in his daily life. This volume presents 409 photographs taken from publications on prehistoric art, intended for contemplation, understanding, conjecture, incomprehension and misinterpretation.

Peter Piller has been working with found images, photography and drawing since the 1990s. Ever since he worked at a newspaper clippings service as an art student in Hamburg, Piller has devoted himself to collecting visual material and subsequently recontextualising it in thematic series, with the aim of imparting new meanings and dimensions to it. To date, the Peter Piller Archive has grown to comprise thousands of images — whose sources include a commercial archive of aerial photography, images from the internet and historical postcards. Inspired by his keen observations and subtle sense of humour, this archive is constantly and meticulously reorganised to represent new associative formations that offer penetrating insights into the activities and rituals of everyday life. The wide range of subjects spans from depictions of (cultural) landscapes, people touching cars or peering into potholes, to the juxtaposition of traditional role models, protest signs, trained dogs and much more.