Hans-Peter Feldmann

b. 1941, Germany

Hans-Peter Feldmann (b. 1941, Düsseldorf, Germany) would not describe himself as an artist. He is a compulsive collector and appropriator of found images and everyday ephemera. His works have an aesthetic and conceptual simplicity. An interest in the formal language of typology is played out in pictorial assemblages of the overlooked and mundane; strawberries, shoes, seated women in paintings, lips, romantic seascapes, kitsch floral photography. His witty play with traditional aesthetics sees collections of classical paintings of nudes and portraits daubed with black crosses, red noses and cross-eyes.

Feldmann intentionally bypasses the rules of the art market and high culture by making unsigned, undated works and limitless editions. Similarly, his artworks and exhibitions remain untitled, thereby allowing the works to speak for themselves. In doing so he resists commodification and commercialisation – making his work purely about the value of the art itself. He is of the democratic belief that art cannot be owned and that it is purely the viewer’s personal experience of the work that engenders its worth.

Text courtesy Simon Lee Gallery.