Peter Zimmermann: Swipe

Rarely has a study of sources been so amusing

There are many facets to Peter Zimmermann s work. At the end of the 1980s, the so-called Book Cover Paintings dominated the Cologne artist painted book titles of atlases, art books, travel guides, and dictionaries with epoxy on canvases. In his card­board objects, he then worked with spatial distor­tions of text and image, focusing on loops and
their reciprocal effects. These were followed by the ­successful series of vibrantly colored shiny can­vases of pure abstract form painting, in which the artist first altered digital templates, photos, film stills, and diagrams using graphic algorithms and then applied them in numerous transparent layers of epoxy resin. Since 2014, in keeping with this ­approach, Peter Zimmermann has increasingly ­returned to oil painting, creating billowing oceans full of tentacles bathed in vibrant colors. For the new 2023 volume of Kienbaum Artists Books entitled »Swipe«, the artist has now combed through his collection and consolidated his sources as well as his works into a wild potpourri. The analogies that come to light are ­indications of a profound examination of the ­relationship between original and copy, and of the very notion of surface. Rarely, though, has an autodidactic study of sources also been so amusing.