Peter Roehr: Field Pulsations

Peter Roehr – it's time to discover his work!

"I assemble available things of the same kind together. These might, for example, be objects, photographs, freestanding forms such as letters, texts, tones and sounds, film-material, etc. The results I call "montages". I use no organic objects, but only constructed, preferably industrially-produced things." With this statement 1969 Peter Roehr (1944–1968, Frankfurt-on-the-Main) characterizes his entire artistic project, defining the complete oeuvre produced between 1962 and 1967. Roehr is one of the most advanced, austere and pioneering artists of the time – a period that saw the flourishing of Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Minimalism. His ruthlessly serial work bridges these in unique fashion, and also touches on the Happening (through his curating with Paul Maenz), Appropriation, Land Art, Process Art and even Op Art. These movements, or more accurately, outlooks and practices, were all part of a globalizing media and consumer society, where culture was a product to be consumed like any other. Like so many European artists, let alone those working outside of Western cultural structures, Roehr has been marginalized from the canon of global (i.e. American) mid-century trends. In this outstanding publication Sarah Hayden and Paul Hegarty intend to illustrate the extent of Roehr's achievement across text, film, sound, objects, photographs, curated exhibitions, all within the terrain of serial form.