Peter Hutchinson: Dreamed Paradises

Cat. Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck

Exhibition catalogue, edited by Oliver Kornhoff
texts (German/English) by Inger Christensen, Michael Lailach, Alexandre Quoi, and an interview with Peter Hutchinson by Jutta Mattern
128 p with 140 coloured illustrations
300 x 245 mm, brochure with dustjacket

ISBN 978-3-940953-27-8

(out of print)

A friend of Peter Smithson

If there is such a thing as rediscovery, then perhaps this retrospective of works by Peter Hutchinson, at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, along with the accompanying catalogue, constitutes one of the most important of the past few decades.
Involved as he was in establishing Earth Art, the photographic documents of his early works beautifully convey the formal principles of their origins. These principles can be encompassed by the terms scientific and emblematic and correspondingly exude that very coolness associated with the American expressive camp behaviour. The sudden change towards a romantic attitude, inherent in this ideology, can be studied above all, in the work of Peter Hutchinson–in stark contrast to the development of works by his long-standing friends and associates Dennis Oppenheim or Peter Smithson, whose creative analysis of the scientific conjunction of all manner of entropic questions remained a primary concern in their work. Hutchinson by contrast, demonstrates a more pragmatic, artistic approach, reconciling en passant formal arrangements with an associative, free, and radical way of working, for example, when he throws a rope into the air and then proceeds to plant flowers in the impression it leaves behind on the ground. These works, as well as the collages, photographs, and objects from the past 20 years, have led to an extension of Earth Art into utopian and ecological realms. Ultimately, the reference to »dreamed paradises« is indicative of the fact that Hutchinson’s works inhabit a place where art and the experience of nature coincide.

Exhibition:
Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 18/09/2009–07/03/2010