Erscheinungen

“Art is made everywhere,” says Peter Piller in an interview. The forty-nine-year-old knows what he’s talking about. He has spent years looking through the archives of regional newspapers or at aerial photographs of single-family homes in Germany, then making a selection available to the public in book and exhibition form. In effect, these mostly anonymous photographs have something ridiculous, humorous, and fathomless in common. For his new series, Erscheinungen (Manifestations), Piller spent more than three years at freeway rest stops, taking pictures of the often filthy or damaged backsides of trucks displaying figures of women from ads. Because he removes all typography, however, the ladies’ gestures and poses relate to nothing. The results are meaningful, yet ultimately mysterious “manifestations.” Like Piller’s other volumes, this new publication of his archive is a veritable artist’s book—a real collector’s item.