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It is no coincidence that this retrospective is now on display at the Kunstpalast – Feldmann associates the building with a formative childhood experience:
“The Kunstpalast was the first museum Hans-Peter Feldmann visited as a young boy. This is where his enduring enthusiasm for art began,” explains Felix Krämer, general director of the Kunstpalast, “which makes us all the more delighted and honoured that, at Feldmann’s own special request, this was to be his final museum exhibition. He worked closely with us from the very beginning of the planning process.”
Feldmann explored the boundaries between art and everyday life. His themes include voyeurism, social clichés, the relationship between original and copy, consumerism and (pop) culture. His motifs were often playful, humorous and very direct. Feldmann developed a fascination for visual imagery at an early age, collecting photographs, postcards, advertising leaflets and many other materials. Using the image archive he had gradually established, he created collages – an artistic practice he continued to pursue throughout his career. He was interested in the intention behind the pictures and the ideal images, desires and projections they conveyed.
After his application to the Düsseldorf Art Academy was rejected, Feldmann studied painting in Linz in the early 1960s. However, he soon began to doubt his abilities and turned away from painting. He began to cover the backs of his paintings with collages made from advertising photographs, magazines and other materials. From the late 1960s onwards, Feldmann devoted himself entirely to photography and artist books. His Bilderheften (Picture Books) from this period contain images of everyday objects that the artist placed in new contexts. The Zeitserien (Time Series) document seemingly banal everyday scenes in a temporal sequence: Feldmann photographed his neighbour cleaning her windows, for example, or a ship sailing on the Rhine. In one of his major works, Sonntagsbilder (Sunday Pictures, 1977), the Düsseldorf-based artist combined popular and widely recognised motifs to create an idyllic, kitschy and harmonious concept that was typical of the era. At the same time, Feldmann also highlighted a problem inherent to the photographic medium: he challenged the relationship between original and reproduction by treating these planes as interchangeable. He reduced the originally colourful source images to black and white. Conversely, colour also played an important role in the years that followed: Feldmann began to add colour to copies – from amateur photographs to press images and advertisements to reproductions of famous works of art or plaster casts.
“Feldmann turned the unwritten rules of the art world upside down,” explains Felicity Korn, curator of the exhibition and head of the 20th and 21st century collection at the Kunstpalast. “His goal was to challenge the societal role of images and objects and to create a vibrant, open space that brings art and everyday life closer together.”
Despite gallery presentations and participating in major art exhibitions such as documenta 1972 and 1977, Feldmann initially failed to gain widespread recognition. Disappointed, he turned his back on the art world in 1980 and was no longer actively involved in it. However, this did not mean that he ceased all artistic activity. He concentrated his efforts on his antiques and souvenir shop in the old town of Düsseldorf and ran parallel enterprises such as a mail order business for thimbles, which he sold as far afield as Australia and South Africa. These activities not only symbolised his economic independence from the art market; according to Feldmann, the shop itself was much more “art” than anything else that would be typically considered as such. He did not draw the traditional distinction between art and everyday life – and therein lies the key to his understanding of art.
It was not until 1989 that he agreed to another major solo exhibition, when curator Kasper König invited him to the Portikus in Frankfurt. There, the artist presented the same works he had shown ten years earlier: colourisations, notebooks, toys. The selection of works seemed like a statement – and at the same time a test of how his art would now be perceived.
After returning to the art world, Feldmann worked primarily on publications and in the medium of photography, drawing on his early work. He continued some series, such as Autoradios, während gute Musik spielt (Car Radios While Good Music Is Playing, 1970s–1990s). In addition, Feldmann continued to use found photographic material, as in L’amore (1992): six photographs discovered at a flea market depict a couple on a trip, both standing in front of a well-cultivated flower bed as well as naked and very exposed in a hotel room. Feldmann realised many image series both in book form and as prints, most notably 100 Jahre (100 Years) – a photography project that was published as a hardcover edition in 2001 and is also the subject of a central room in the Kunstpalast exhibition. Over an extended period of time, Feldmann took 101 photographs of 101 people from his personal circle aged between 0 and 100.
After the turn of the millennium, Hans-Peter Feldmann’s works featuring everyday objects, toys and souvenirs took on an increasingly important role. He arranged household items in seemingly absurd combinations, such as building a house out of folding rulers or connecting two telephones using their receiver cables. In his expansive installation Schattenspiel (Shadow Play, 2002), Feldmann also invited viewers to take a fresh look at the familiar world surrounding them: on rotating turntables, toy figures and other found objects perform a play that is projected onto the wall behind them by small spotlights. The shadows of the puppets, animals and toys are distorted into something fantastical or even grotesque. Feldmann thus alludes to the tension between what is visible and what is real.
From the very beginning, Hans-Peter Feldmann’s choice of subjects also included socially critical elements. His interest in social and political issues is reflected in the work 9/12 Titelseiten (9/12 Front Pages, 2001–2008), which occupies an entire room in the exhibition. The collection of 156 front pages of newspapers from around the world from 12 September 2001 illustrates a unique snapshot of an event that had global consequences. Feldmann brought together a wide variety of perspectives and clearly illustrated how the combination of images and text influences their perception.
In 2007, Feldmann “returned” to painting, but refused to accept the role of painter. He purchased paintings at auctions and flea markets in order to have them painted over – with red noses, unusual tattoos or bikini tan lines. He had all references to shipping or birds removed from seascapes. He then assembled the paintings into groups of works that filled entire walls, including several copies of Giorgione and Titian’s Sleeping Venus (2014). For another installation on display in the exhibition, the artist worked with Lichtflecken (Light Spots, ca. 2013): spotlights on a coloured museum wall, “fixed” in place with an ordinary nail.
Feldmann’s exhibitions were intended to be impressive and stimulating, to be provocative while also breaking with institutional conventions. The artist also pursued this strategy in a performance in 2015: at the opening of Art Cologne, he demonstrated the connection between art and commerce. Walking up and down between the stands, he carried a sign that read in German: “All faces beam brightly / at the beautiful word ‘earn’”.
Feldmann consistently toyed with the boundaries between audience, art and market. In the 1995 group exhibition Take Me (I’m Yours) at the Serpentine Gallery in London, visitors could take artworks home with them or exchange them for personal items. Feldmann stuck individual found photographs to a wall, which visitors could remove themselves. The concept has been continued ever since, for example in Paris in 2015 with postcards of the city. A new version was developed for the retrospective at the Kunstpalast: five postcards featuring images of Düsseldorf from the 1980s are available for visitors to take away. Feldmann originally selected them for the invitation to his show at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in 1990; they have now been specially reissued.
Art Exhibition: Hans-Peter Feldmann named almost all of his exhibitions in this way. The title for the show at the Kunstpalast also comes from the artist himself, who was intensively involved in the initial preparations for the project. Feldmann always played a major role in the conception of his exhibitions. After the turning point of his death, it was clear that his unmistakable style should not be continued, but rather reimagined. The result is the first chronological survey of Feldmann’s 60-year career, featuring 80 selected photographs, sculptures, paintings and installations. The Düsseldorf-based artist received global recognition for his art. His works have been exhibited in venues such as the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. They are represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and many more. In 2010, Feldmann was awarded the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize. For the accompanying exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011, he took the prize money of $100,000 and wallpapered the exhibition space with it in the form of one-dollar bills.
Before reaching the exhibition, visitors will be surprised by an upside-down car in the courtyard and greeted by the sculpture Zwei Schwestern (Two Sisters, cast in 2014) in the foyer. A shelf with everyday objects on the first floor of the foyer serves as an exchange platform for the public. Visitors are invited to fill this shelf with their own objects – from kitsch items and knick-knacks to personal mementos – or to exchange items they have brought with them for existing objects. There are also regular creative activities for visitors here.
An extensive accompanying programme has been developed for the retrospective. It is complemented by a richly illustrated catalogue in the form of a book collage – a concept developed by Feldmann himself: double pages from five publications produced by the artist for exhibitions between 1989 and 2015 were selected in accordance with the list of works in the retrospective and reproduced exactly. The image section is supplemented by three essays and a total of eleven contributions paying tribute to the artist by friends and colleagues including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Peter Piller, Annette Messager and Juergen Teller.

Curator: Felicity Korn, Head of the twentieth and 21st Century Art Collection, Kunstpalast