Hans-Peter Feldmann
From: 18.01.2014 - 6.03.2014
Hans-Peter Feldmann
For his third solo presentation at ProjecteSD, we are pleased to present for the first time in Spain, Stamps with paintings. A whole installation consisting of one-hundred and fifty examples of stamps each bearing a different image of an historical painting of a nude, displayed in identical cream paper frames and occupying all gallery’s space. Stamps with paintings, seen by the artist as “an exhibition of paintings”, is filled with seductive power, simplicity and subtle humor and truly invites the viewer to travel through the show and take a closer look at the “paintings”, details and information contained in each small frame. The collection of stamps spans nations and centuries, providing an extensive archaeology of the nude (mostly female) and its various representations in mass-media and high culture. The work is strikingly relevant, considering today’s exaggerated consumption of images and information, and poignant for its symbolic use of the postage stamp – not only are these historical objects and cultural markers, but they are representative of a means of communication which is becoming increasingly obsolete.
Stamps with paintings is an excellent example of Feldmann’s most essential practise: collecting. An activity that he started as a child in postwar West Germany, precisely collecting stamps because they gave him an imaginative access to the wider outside world. The installation contains some of the recurring themes and features in Feldmann’s art: the repetition and seriality, the clichéd or stereotypical, the erotic image and the artist’s fascination for women, and the modest, simple and straightforward tone which defines the artist‘s work.