Peter Zimmermann

Peter Zimmermann - Invisible

06.05.2026 - 13.06.2026

Opening on Wednesday 6 May at 6 pm

In Praise of the Surface

Zimmermann has developed a unique painting technique that combines epoxy resin and oil paint. His abstract compositions—often serial in nature and modeled after digital prints—make him one of the leading figures in contemporary German painting. The transfer of a motif selected from his own photographic archive is achieved through a multi-layered process, in which each color is applied successively. The vibrant colors of his canvases mimic the smooth, dazzling appearance of digital interfaces. While Zimmermann plays with the pictorial codes of Pop Art and the seductive iconography of the media, he adds the demanding austerity of abstraction.

His relationship to forms is literally plastic, expanded and stretched; the luminosity of the surface thus creates a tension between the surface’s brilliance and the painting’s lack of depth. The material of his canvases, both tactile and melting, accentuated by pictorial blurring, truly immerses the viewer’s gaze. The exploration of the surface—or rather, where any illusion of depth has vanished—brings forth a field where space can unfold. The syntax of composition that would stem from a causal chain running from A to B does not hold Zimmermann back; the Color Field is not far off. Nothing better, perhaps, then, than the infinite possibilities of the surface: this space—just a space—to represent contingency without explaining it, and without stifling color. Zimmermann conceives of paintings as the logical link between being and appearance. Wittgenstein, in one of his remarks on color, expresses this as an injunction: “Think of the fact that things can be reflected on a polished white surface and that their reflected images may seem to be behind the surface, and, in a certain sense, be seen through them.”[1]

What can one say, except that Zimmermann finds here a way to understand the phenomenal world of painting by exploring it through its reflections. And it is through transparency that he attempts, in a certain way, to resolve the enigma of abstraction—its illusory power and its expressive force despite its lack of interiority. Flat and translucent, the open, almost three-dimensional forms of Zimmermann’s canvases thus superimpose and overlap one another.

 Raya Lindberg, April 2026.

[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colors, translated from German by Gérard Granel, Trans-Europ-Repress, Mauvezin, 1983.

Exhibition Views: © Louis Weber