Peter Zimmermann: Swipe

Rarely has a study of sources been so amusing

Peter Zimmermann's work is diverse. At the end of the 1980s, the so-called book cover paintings dominated - the Cologne-based artist painted book titles of atlases, art books, travel guides and dictionaries with epoxy on canvas. In his cardboard objects, he then worked with spatial distortions of text and image, thematising loops and their interactions. This was followed by the successful series of colourful, glossy canvases with pure abstract form painting, in which the artist first alienated digital templates, photos, film stills or diagrams using graphic algorithms and then applied them in numerous transparent layers of epoxy resin. Since 2014, true to this approach, Peter Zimmermann has increasingly returned to oil painting and created billowing seas full of tentacles bathed in vibrant colours. For the new 2023 volume of Kienbaum Artists' Books entitled "swipe", the artist has now rummaged through his collection and condensed both his sources and his works into a wild potpourri. The analogies that emerge are indications of a profound examination of the relationship between original and image and the concept of surface. Rarely, however, has an autodidactic study of sources been so amusing.