Press Archive 1998

Peter Thiele, Klinikum Fürth, Fürth, Bavaria, 13.03. – 13.05.1998

[Peter Thiele]

Fürther Nachrichten ,21./22.03.1998, REGINA URBAN

Creative play with the abc

Hospital shows pictures by Peter Thiele, photographs by Michael Jost Meier and art by pupils

Two professors from the Fachhochschule, Nuremberg and pupils from the Hauptschule Pfisterstraße are exhibited at the main building of the hospital. It is the third exhibition there and has just opened. Art-Agency Hammond and hospital-employee Herbert Galster succeeded again putting together an equally vibrant exhibition in a string of shows with art by children, photographers and painters. After the enlargement of the exhibition rooms on three floors in the past year, the hospital in Fürth can now claim to be the only one with the largest and most interesting art presentations in the town.

Peter Thiele, who is teaching at the FH since 1979 and long-time member in the traditional Nuremberg artist group "The Circle" („Der Kreis“) shows a colourful world of images and characters at the third floor - his "image characters", which he described as "distant relatives of the famous letters family" defined and which arose out of his fascination with the alphabet. In a Laotse-citation about the "Tao" the artist puts still intact characters in colourful little boxes as complete sentences together. But then only follow fragments of characters, deformed shapes that are forming new figurative shapes, which look like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs rather then the ABC.



Mischievous game

Thiele puts his "characters" in small white squares, lets them dance, flies them through the sky or weaves them into a carpet. That looks like a mischievous game with the self-created character alphabet, in which the letters have snouts and faces that look like toys or small grinning ghosts.

Nevertheless, there is order in the pictures. Thiele tames his phantasms by having them grouped in rows and placed in squares. At the centre of the pictures the form is strict, but at the sidelines somersaults are turned.

"Image characters" are for Thiele "results of creative curiosity". They arise out of a calligraphic or typographic impulse by the artist and they grow further or disappear again. As if they had lives of their own to the surprise of their creator. For the viewer, this is a very exciting experience.

In addition to the large acrylic paintings and mixed media works shows Thiele in the exhibition four small, older etchings of exceptional craftsmanship quality. Again, the playful sense of order by the artist is revealed. His in many small boxes lined up and numbered "Trees of life" are bizarre fantasy figures, from hands, birds, monstrous human figures formed with eyes and tails, sometimes looking defiantly or maliciously grinning. An eerie and funny allegorical panopticon that is full of mysterious symbols.