In his works, Peer Boehm plays with the perception of reality and the memory of experiences and visual perceptions. The works are based on old photographs that show strangers, places and interiors that cannot be clearly identified. Viewers are familiar with such images – they know them from the past. But these photos seem alienated. The works are monochrome and have lost their three-dimensionality. The viewer encounters them like a faded childhood memory, into which they can put themselves, even though the people depicted are unknown to them.

This is made possible by the way they are depicted. The viewer perceives the figures less as strangers and more as anonymous types with whom everyone can identify. In this process, it can also happen that events that lie far in the past and are only vaguely present in the memory become similar to the way they are depicted in the picture. As we look at them, our own images form in our memories blend with Boehm’s works, making the strangers seem more familiar and infusing them with life. The viewer almost becomes an artist himself. In the imagination, completely new images emerge from a mixture of snippets of memory and the artist’s works. Born in Cologne in 1968, the artist studied archaeology as well as German language and literature at the University of Cologne. He is co-founder of various artists’ groups and his work has been shown in over 20 solo exhibitions in Germany and Italy. Peer Boehm lives and works in Cologne.