KUNSTHALLE seitenlichtsaal
Peter Land
21.4. – 20.5.2012

Peter Land’s (born 1966) solo exhibition in the Seitenlichtsaal of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf owes its title to the Danish artist’s eponymous installation: Springtime (2010) is a large pile of bricks from which an arm protrudes. Whether it concerns the limb of a person who has been buried alive and is crying for help, or rather, as the title suggests, a triumphant “Here I am again”, remains open. It is a two-facedness oscillating between tragedy and comedy, between a nightmare and a child’s game that traverses the artist’s entire oeuvre, frequently confronting us with extreme opposites.

Land gained recognition in the mid 1990s with his simply produced videos – documentations of personal failure and excessive meaninglessness in which the artist is seen tumbling down an endless flight of stairs, repeatedly falling off a ladder while painting or sinking himself in a boot. This moment frequently appears in Land’s works – even more so in his videos than in his later paintings, drawings and installations – in which the mood or the entire situation literally shifts. Land thus performs the eternal struggle for balance and ultimately stability, its loss and the renewed search for it.

Not only the exhibition, but particularly the present catalogue as well, makes evident that Lewis Carroll is one of Land’s most important sources of inspiration. Land found an ally in Alice in questioning the meaningfulness of social conventions and even one’s own identity.

Please find here the catalogue of the exhibition.