Hans-Peter Feldmann
303 Gallery, New York
November 5 - December 20, 2025
303 Gallery presents a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann (1941-2023). Coinciding with his retrospective at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (September 18, 2025 – January 11, 2026), this presentation brings together over 40 photographs, sculptures and paintings spanning the artist’s 60-year career.
Düsseldorf-based Hans-Peter Feldmann was a passionate collector of images and ephemera, an original thinker and one of the first conceptual artists. Hans-Peter Feldmann focused on photography and artist books since the late sixties. Often collaging found images from magazines, postcards, books, advertisements, and stamps, Feldman used familiar motifs to explore the boundaries between art and everyday life. Unmade beds, car radios – Feldmann focalized unattended moments for a contemplative narrative based on being rather than acting.
Influenced by the Dadaist, the Situationists, Fluxus and Vienna Actionists, Hans-Peter Feldmann viewed art as an impression rather than the object. Feldmann's practice was defined not by materiality but by ideas. On view are several works from Feldmann’s Time series which began in 1970, which use analogue film rolls to shoot continuously the same place, object, or person. Modest subjects and trivial themes are chronicled frame by frame, recording the passage of time. His methods focused on the sequence rather than a single frame; it was through repetition that ideas became more conscious and deeper insight could be gleaned. His work Beine consists of 30 photographs of women’s legs – where one photograph of a woman’s legs may simply be provocative, 30 photographs pinned together becomes something more. In Alle Kleider einer Frau, 70 pieces of woman’s garment are displayed one photo at a time, the woman hidden, the artist emotionally distant, opening up space for the viewer’s interpretation.
In 2007, Hans-Peter Feldmann returned to painting without assuming the traditional role of the painter. Modifying and appropriating 19th Century paintings sourced from auctions and flea markets, Feldmann would transform classical depictions into post-modern caricatures by adding red noses or smudged lipstick to portraits, tattoos or tan lines to nudes. Feldmann’s work Horizont consists of 11 landscape paintings from various time periods. Differing in size, the pictures are aligned with their horizon line to create a continuous thread and reveal a new genre of landscape. Several paintings on view are suspended from the ceiling, a call back to Lina Bo Bardi’s design for the Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo (1968), this ‘floating installation’ democratizes the experience of the artwork, putting the viewer on equal ground with the paintings.
Hans-Peter Feldmann spent his career challenging the social role of images and subverting expectations, reframing notions of beauty and representation. Feldmann believed art isn't confined to a gallery or museum but woven into everyday life – his works are a reflection on looking, an ability that every viewer holds.
303 GALLERY
555 W 21 Street, New York, NY 10011
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