A visitor to life, in the night, to be sure it is quite there.
Grasping life at the sound of the slow regular breathing of sleep, observing its nocturnal form, discreet, secret yet real – from a short distance, under the veil of obscurity or dim lighting…An attempt to find a reality, a meaning even to that without meaning… Retaining in order to look again, once more, otherwise? To really see?

Peter Neuchs’ nightly wanderings bring together very different points of views and subjects presented with no apparent hierarchy of importance. Various media have been used to make a total installation composed of types of expression characteristic of the artist: photos framed in a way that seem to cut out their subjects, watercolours following a similar approach yet where a sensual materiality adds a further dimension, “wall paper” created from the repetition of images, drawings and applications on embroidered table cloths, and three dimensional objects.
Complex, certainly, especially as the subjects, at first sight, appear to have no connexion between them: fragmented outlines of naked bodies, diaphanous visions of trees at dawn, bird’s nest box in a small wood, bed of flowers, solitary car on a road, stroller on a path towards morning light, images of a child’s face repeated on a large table cloth, small painted wooden chair…

The solitary figure (Wanderer) advances towards a luminous void where land and sky converge. This photograph alludes to Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, just as the landscapes (Garden) with their dream-like atmospheres could refer to Northern European Romanticism. However, if romanticism there is, notions of ornament and infinity are also introduced through the use of image multiplication. The artist creates “wall paper” using a mirroring effect where the solitary walker motif is multiplied. This slide towards ornament and decoration can also be seen in his Tablecloth, a large embroidered tablecloth covered with a multiplied photo portrait of a small boy. The nature of this support as well as the image of a sink painted in its centre, establishes this work in a daily banality, a story, the private sphere. A temporal dimension is suggested, an allusion to death even, as the portrait type is similar to those sometimes decorating tomb stones.

A private, more intimate sphere emerges in the photos of naked female body fragments: sensual nakedness perhaps, yet, especially, nudity, like touching warm or cold skin. Nudes without faces, blending into the wall paper environment and the fabric upon which they lie. A chiaroscuro atmosphere, both poetic and disturbing prevails in the image of a naked body fragment lying on a white sheet, where the hand in the foreground is lit by an unknown source … A hint at ‘Marat assassinated’ or a tender gaze upon a loved one’s hand? A large photo viewed from above features a naked body, feet joined and arms spread out, lying fixed on a brown sheet background. Ambiguity prevails between a body “offered” and a crucified body.

The works making up nightly wanderings are linked by their filled surface treatment, in an “all-over” style, creating a feeling of intensity and insistence. Recalling the Baroque aspiration to unite terrestrial and celestial, visible and invisible – encompassing the temporal, the perishable and what pertains to eternity. The memento mori, a notion dear to Peter Neuchs, lies at the heart of his new work: through a play on perception his blurry images interrogate our reality, our relation to matter, our existence as matter… In this body of work, which can be seen as an accumulation of proofs of life and reflections he revisits the principle of “raw notes” accumulating all kinds of images and texts, also present in previous works (Footnotes – Dreamtests - Sans-sens - Restless). An attempt to retain all, to record everything which could also be translated as a need to feel alive or perhaps a wish to fill the void? With nightly wanderings Peter Neuchs ventures between tangible, carnal materiality connected with daily life and a more profound interrogation of cyclical existence.

PETER NEUCHS (1958 - …), Danish artist living in Rio de Janeiro, regularly exhibits at the Galerie Maria Lund (CUT - OUTS, Motel Acapulco, R.J., 2002 – DREAMTEST, 2004 – SWEET PAPER, 2006 – œuvres nouvelles, 2007 - Counting sheep, 2008) as well as the Salon du dessin contemporain, Paris, (2007, 2008) where his works were favourable received by the public as well as the critics (« les aquarelles si charnelles de Peter Neuchs » (“Peter Neuchs’ carnal watercolours”), blog Lunettes rouges from the 1st April 2007 - Télérama, sept. 2007)
In 2008 the FRAC de la Haute Normandie acquired one of his drawings.
Currently, Peter Neuchs participates in The Myth of Childhood exhibtion (curated by Andrea Holzherr) with works from his series Dreamtests. The exhibition is showing this spring at the Haus für kunst Uri (Altdorf, Switzerland) and over the summer at CCA Kunsthalle Andratx (Mallorca).

• From 4th May 2009 works by Peter Neuchs will be visible on www.marialund.com
  
• PUBLISHING: For the exhibition a folder with text by the art historian Itzhak Goldberg is published.
  
• OPENING: Thursday 7th May 2009 from 6pm to 9pm in the presence of the artist.
  
• The exhibition ends on Saturday 6th June 2009.
  

For further information about the  availability of visuals, please contact :

GALERIE MARIA LUND     48 rue de Turenne     75003 Paris

Tuesday-Saturday 12-7 pm    
ph : (33) 01 42 76 00 33    cellphone : (33) 06 61 15 99 91    fax :(33) 01 42 76 00 10