conditions of the museum or other art world institutions is certainly not false, but it tends to accept the museum´s ideological self-presentation on its own terms as a given rather than exploiting its complex format more creatively or to bypass the art world altogether. Every day we are seeing nonstop; every day there are a myriad of images being dumped into our awareness. The various categories, media and histories become materials to use like the institutions you inhabit. In a literal depiction of a graveyard, Peter Vahlefeld presents the canon of art history as a hallowed myth, resonant beyond its expiration date of the latest contemporary evening auction or museum shop calendar. Their self-consciously brutal surfaces seem to be corrupted from within. A decoded script of interrupted image and muted texture takes its pleasure in contrast and surface humorously critiquing the hallowed respect and predominant values of art history, which have to be monetized by auction houses in order to gain value. What has happened that has made images the focus of so much passion? Museums are jam-packed with massive queues and people running frenetically not to miss their allocated time slot. Big institutions must be given credit for making contemporary art available to the masses, and that´s obviously very important, but regrettably, at the same time, the individual experience has been heavily compromised—except for the museum shop, which amalgamates past, present and future with merchandising providing a platform for fridge magnets, coffee mugs, puzzles, cushions, etc. Vahlefeld´s over-paintings of museum shop merchandise draw on the symbiotic relationship between high art and commerce, exploring the »un-reality« where art becomes fashionable and this fashion excessively cheap. Fridge magnets with Vincent van Gogh´s Sunflowers for 5 GBP; T-Shirts, tattoo templates and even toilet paper with the same motif for 3 GBP. The quaint old notion of the museum as a haven for the contemplation of the art it owns has given way to the museum as a cog in the exhibition-industrial complex of shopping malls, to put on an endless list of exhibitions, to satisfy show-addicted visitors, tourists, critics, sponsors, trustees, politicians. And if the show is sold out, please apply for tickets online a minimum of several weeks in advance !!! By embracing digital innovations and state-of-the-art marketing strategies, museums have finally embedded themselves in the mass culture machine as well. Museum shop merchandise and their surface of art are used as a means of seduction or ridicule; they appear highly plasticised, saturated in gloss and permeated by sensuality. To confront the binary of oppositions, which pervades contemporary art, Peter Vahlefeld deconstructs, reconstructs and abstracts these surfaces; knowing how to work with materials loaded with symbolism in order to suggest something else. The notion that art has some inherent value is the central and most productive illusion of the art market. The rhythms of production, distribution, and consumption are now key, not the things in themselves, that characterizes our cultural moment at the beginning of this new millenium. Richard Mutt
2 Untitled Painting on Picasso´s Marie Therése by Gagosian Gallery, New York | 2014 | Oil, Inkjetprints, Fabric on Canvas | 200 x 140 cm