Peter Zimmermann

PETER ZIMMERMANN (Germany, 1956).
"Orange #01854," 2013.
Epoxy resin on canvas.
Presents label of the Filomena Soares Gallery (Lisbon).
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 150 x 110 cm.
Orange #01854 is a representative work of Peter Zimmermann's artistic maturity. At this point in his career, the artist had already consolidated his own language based on abstraction, the use of intense color and the application of epoxy resin as a central element of his production. In fact he had already experimented with the use of different shades of orange as reflected in the work "Spice" from 2012. Since the late 1990s, Zimmermann had progressively abandoned figuration and any direct reference to recognizable images to focus almost exclusively on abstract compositions derived from manipulated digital images.
By 2013, Zimmermann was fully engaged in exploring the optical and material possibilities of color, delving into the layering of translucent layers that generate sensations of depth, movement and luminosity. Works such as this 4 show a high degree of technical control and a clear coherence with the whole of his production of those years, where color acts as the absolute protagonist and painting becomes a perceptual rather than a narrative experience.
Peter Zimmermann studied at the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, in the German city of Stuttgart, from 1978 to 1983. Since then he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Germany and abroad. He works as a painter, sculptor and object artist. He taught at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne from 2002 to 2007. Zimmermann's work is very varied, but always interested in this conceptual approach through oil painting. In the eighties, Zimmermann's production is part of the flourishing art scene in Cologne, a context to which he belongs but from which at the same time he distances himself through a reflexive practice and away from the neo-expressionist positions of some of his colleagues. Characteristic of this period are his reproductions of book covers, catalogs and monographs of artists, dictionaries or travel guides, made in synthetic resins and pigments. Also belonging to this period are the series of posters and cardboard boxes in which, making use of an administrative aesthetic, the artist questions the authorship and reproducibility of the image in the contemporary world. These concerns are materialized in Zimmermann's works through the appropriation of materials that are circulating on the net and that are transformed with the use of different computer programs. As a result of these operations, abstract paintings and interventions emerge that problematize the illusory character and the superficiality of the image, constructing an imaginary that catches the observer's gaze through bright shapes and colors. His recent exhibitions include those held at the Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst (Otterndorf, Germany, 2016); the Charim Galerie (Vienna, 2016); and the Museum für Neue Kunst (Freiburg, Germany, 2016). He has participated in group shows at venues such as Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain d'Auvergne (Clermont- Ferrand, France, 2012); the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (Bielefeld, Germany, 2013); the Museum Weserburg (Bremen, Germany, 2011); and the Kunstmuseum Bonn (Bonn, Germany, 2009). Zimmermann's work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Bundeskunstsammlung in Bonn, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.