Collector

Hans-Peter Feldman has been one of my favorite artists for a long time now. Maybe it´s because he likes collecting, just like me. Photographs, people, stories, history, cultural objects. I always felt that his work is easy to access but not simple. Most of the time it is quite serious, and even though I normally prefer “witty” stuff I seem to discovering interesting projects and then find out it´s done by him. I especially like when he uses photographs of everyday life/people but arranges them in a way it makes a completely different meaning. As the New York Magazine Art Review once put it Eccentric and deliberately naive, Hans-Peter Feldman turns snapshots into sharpshooting.

For the current Art Basel one of his exhibit is an installation called 100 Years It´s 101 black-and-white portraits of friends and family aged from eight weeks to 100 years old. It is a chronology of human life within which viewers can situate themselves, glimpsing past, present, and future. When reading about it and seeing the pictures it reminded me of another project where people from all ages are asked one question: How do you see your future. (Unfortunately I can´t remember the artist) I am aware this focuses on a slightly different aspect but nevertheless I think it takes the same approach.

It proves again that making things really simple but excecuting it in a consistent way is what convinces me the most. Hopefully my work will be developing in this direction in the future.