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Peter KöhlerIn the Dead of Night
Dazzlingly beautiful and vaguely disturbing – is perhaps one way of describing Peter Köhler’s indescribable and monstrous imagery. There is something hallucinatory about his dark romanticism that hold our eyes in thrall from the very first glance.
Köhler is inspired by a myriad of phenomena. Top of the list is folklore, the occult and esoterica. Literary sources are also vital, including the gothic tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe.
The evocative exhibition title, In the Dead of Night – an expression that usually refers to the darkest and coldest nocturnal hours – provides the framework. Each picture, however, is a world of its own. Some characters recur. Wolves, serpents, fauns, witches and the grim reaper meet in a tarantella or a carnivalesque danse macabre, reminding us of the transience of earthly life.
Architectonic elements such as enigmatic buildings, doors and staircases create mindboggling spatialities. The greenery is a living organism in itself. The viewer is simply forced to navigate the chaotic sceneries in imaginary places without maps or reliable coordinates.
Different pictorial conventions are mixed in a jumble of details that sometimes interlink and sometimes float freely. It is almost as though the images were the result of fluid automatic writing with a ceaseless chain of uncontrolled events. There is an abundance to discover in these scenes, where the order of reality no longer applies. In this astonishing, organised chaos, the gaze can go astray for a lifetime without ever getting bored.