Peter Köhler – Bewildered

In the inner room of the gallery we currently present a series of new drawings by Peter Köhler. The works were initially presented at the artist’s solo exhibition at Sandvikens Konsthall, Sweden in the fall of 2019.

I enjoy working outdoors and being in motion. There is a directness and immediacy in everything I do. I avoid sketches and prefer to improvise.
I try to be open and responsive. The motifs come mostly from my everyday life, travels, places I visit and various meetings with people. I’m inspired by the unspoken, the folkloric, the dark fairy tale and, above all, imagination. Current events and the feeling of an increasingly complicated future.
–Peter Köhler, May 2019

His drawings may be tales but they don’t become full-blown stories, even though they set up hallucinatory narrative structures with meticulously detailed and visually stimulating depictions of what frequently appear to be specific people, places and things. These picture-tales might even have a beginning and an end, as well as prodigious amounts of activity in between, but they resist narrative completion and temporal conformity by embedding the legibility of their representational flexibility into a compositional framework that enables the drawing to transcend any or all limitations of interpretation. (Nevertheless, it is not unimaginable to name the majority of characters, creatures or whatever else we’re looking at in them, no matter how bizarre any of these things may be.) These drawings almost prompt microscopic inspection, but such an investigative way of looking usually leads to assumptions being made about what something must mean, and I’m convinced that that is a dead end, or better yet a buzz kill of the surprising openness of these overflowing yet well-built drawings.
—Terry R. Myers about Peter Köhler, from the essay All Ends Well, 2017

Peter Köhler was born 1971 in Stockholm, where he still lives and works. He is educated at the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm (1995–2000). Selected solo exhibitions: Sandvikens konsthall Sweden (2019), Chart Art Fair, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018), Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2017, 2015, 2012, 2010, 2009), Tobey Fine Arts, New York,US (2006, 2003), Galleri 54, Göteborg, Sweden (2005), Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2004), Brändström & Stene, Stockholm, Sweden (2002). Selected group exhibitions: Artipelag, Stockholm, Sweden (2018), Alma, Stockholm, Sweden (2017), Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, Sweden (2017), RYMD Konstrum, Stockholm, Sweden (2015), Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen, Denmark (2014), Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2013, 2011, 2010, 2009), Frieze Art Fair, London, UK (2012). He has made numerous public commissions and is represented in private and public collections in Sweden, Europe and the US.

More information about Peter Köhler
www.peterkoehler.se

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Gallery Hours:
Tuesday–Friday 12.00–5.00 pm
Saturday 12.00–4.00 pm
And by appointment

Address:
Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Sweden