Peter NEUCHS

“Instead of taking into account all that is not systematically coherent in a body of work, its multiplicity of often contradictory links to reality, we refine it, extract its quintessence on account of drawing a lesson, we reduce it so that we may situate it, link it, almost genealogically, with works before and after.”

Gilles Aillaud


In the early 20th Century, Robert Musil noted the increasing complexity of existence: “Almost everyone realizes now that a shapeless life is the only form which corresponds with the multiple desires and possibilities that fill our lives.”



We acknowledge, works of art are the biography and the geography of their creator. Wanderer, the title given by Peter Neuchs to one of his monumental works, could also be defined as migrant or nomad. An adventurer yet without a fixed objective? An artist? It’s hard to say. Be that as it may, the term corresponds well with this artist whose journey reveals no apparent clear destination. Furthermore, the subjects treated in his photographs seem to belong to two different, even opposing, universes. On the one hand, naked and anonymous body parts on a background of sheets or a wall, interior shots of ‘non-places’. On the other hand, outside settings, void of all human presence, darkened, barely lit landscapes (atmospheres of mist, nightfall or breaking dawn). In these woods, titled Garden, we encounter, here and there, familiar objects: bird’s nest, road sign… The body’s triviality confronted with nature’s romanticism? A version of body art or land art translated into cliché? Or, quite simply, life fragments like those hazards of existence, printed incoherently into memory?
Returning to Wanderer, its imposing format, one distinguishes four figures (are they the same person?) at the end of four alleys crossing a garden. More precisely, there are eight figures as, through a mirroring effect, the image has been doubled in both its vertical and horizontal axe. The parts connect through a graphical motif forming a complex weave of branches. This sophisticated device, not unlike an ornament that could multiply into infinity, frames the figures on their pathway.

Running parallel to his photographic activity, Peter Neuchs also practices “ladies needle work” embroidered tablecloths or handkerchiefs covered with annotations, texts, transfers and drawings. Provocative objects, in so much as they evoke an orderly domestic lifestyle, with no hidden surprises. Their impact on the spectator lies in the tension between the commonplace and its counter function. Further still, following a well established decorative tradition, Neuchs prefers to upholster chairs with some of these works, rather than hanging them up.

Consulting the dictionary once again, the term sedentary is proposed as the antinomy to wanderer. An indication perhaps that Neuchs’ work sums up the paradox of human wandering?

Itzhak Goldberg


Translated from French by Deborah Fruchter and Maria Lund