Hans-Peter Feldmann Interview: Advice to the Young

German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann advises young artists to always follow the path they themselves feel is the right one – however strange or fruitless it seems: “Chasing after false idols or role models is always a dead end.”

Art isn’t about fame, but about carrying through your work and creating something that evokes some sort of experience in the viewer: “When this spark jumps from me to the next person, that’s when art happens in my view.”

Hans-Peter Feldmann (b. 1941) is a German visual conceptual artist, whose approach to art making is collecting, ordering, modifying and re-presenting e.g. photographs and paintings. He thereby frees them from their original social and historical context and enables the spectator to experience them anew. Moreover, Feldmann does not limit the number of editions of his work, nor does he sign them. His works include ‘All the Clothes of a Woman’, ‘Photographs Taken From Hotel Room Windows While Traveling’ and ’11 Left Shoes’. He has also produced a number of publications, including the book ‘1967-1993 – Die Toten’, which contained reproductions of images from newspapers of all the lives lost due to the violence and terrorism in contemporary German history. Feldmann’s work has been exhibited at venues such as MoMA and International Center of Photography in New York and Simon Lee Gallery and Serpentine Galleries in London. In 2010 he was named winner of the eight biennial Hugo Boss Prize.

Hans-Peter Feldmann was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in connection to his exhibition ‘Paintings’ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in April 2015.

Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015

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