Romulus
2017
Installation, variable dimensions .
Materials:
Collection: Courtesy of the Artist.
Peter Wächtler creates artworks that use elements of fiction and folklore, re-using and adapting common narrations and tale-like structures. Making his art from a variety of handcrafted media, whether sculpture, painting or animation, as well as writing, his work is concerned with introspection, its liability and social consequences. Often containing pathos and irony, but also humour and melancholy, we are unclear if his art might be in part autobiographical, but we could otherwise see that it offers reflections on human subjectivity in all its complication, on the fine line between powerfulness and uselessness.
For his exhibition at M HKA titled Romulus, Wächtler has produced a new set of sculptures of terracotta castles. These homespun buildings sit in the gallery space as indicators of scale, in-between model and sculpture. They also use the perspectives possible in the vast exhibition space with a long-distance recognisability like that seen in a romantic painting or as viewed in the distance from a car traveling alongside the highway. Their character of fortification bears a sense of defensiveness, yet glancing into the emptiness of their courtyards leaves open what exactly is protected by these walls.
