Artists

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Press release

Coinciding with the retrospective at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Hans-Peter Feldmann - Art Exhibition, Konrad Fischer Galerie is presenting a solo exhibition by the artist. Hans-Peter Feldmann was born in Hilden in 1941 and lived and worked in Düsseldorf until his death in 2023. We are very pleased to continue our 30-year trusting collaboration with this solo presentation with the estate. Throughout his life, Feldmann remained a solitary figure who approached the art world with cool distance. His method was based on “simply looking,” a skill accessible to everyone that turns into a moment of reflection. Feldmann used art as an epistemological space to reveal how our perception works – how we see, what we know, and what we consider to be “real.” In both his exhibitions and his artist’s books, he radically reduced his works to their essentials: colour on paper, usually without frames or glass. This formal simplicity directs the gaze away from the conventions and hierarchies of the art world, and towards the motif itself. It thus becomes clear how much the effect of an image depends on the context of presentation. Rather than working with originals, he preferred to work with unlimited and unsigned printed products. In doing so, he deliberately challenged the economic structures of the art market. His choice of materials – simple, inexpensive and ephemeral – was a deliberate strategy to counter the entrenched logic of the art system. In his hands, the image did not primarily become a commodity and retained its status as an object of reflection. Feldmann’s approach was decidedly unspectacular. Art was the product of attentive observation not genius. Since the world was already full of meaning for him, artistic intervention was unnecessary; only a change of perspective was required. It is not the object that is unique, but rather the moment of seeing. This epistemological stance rejects essentialist notions of truth: what we see is not simply what is there, but what we are prepared to see. He encourages viewers to look closely at seemingly familiar images and examine their own patterns of perception. His art is less concerned with aesthetic originality than with exposing the construction of supposed certainties. Perhaps its most radical message is that everything is already there – you just have to look closely.