Peter Roehr
Peter Roehr (*1944 Lauenburg; †1968 Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is regarded as one of the earliest protagonists of Minimal and Conceptual Art in Germany. Despite his untimely death at the age of twenty-four, he developed a remarkably coherent body of work based on the principle of serial repetition. Using industrially manufactured objects, found photographs, printed materials, typography, and film sequences, Roehr arranged identical elements into precisely ordered structures, eliminating individual expression in favour of systematic organisation.
Central to his practice is the repetition of a single motif without variation. Through accumulation and juxtaposition, familiar images and everyday materials lose their original context and acquire new visual and conceptual significance. The individual element becomes subordinate to the overall composition, directing attention towards the relationship between repetition, perception, and form. Roehr's work reflects the visual language of mass production and consumer culture while challenging conventional notions of artistic authorship and originality.
His uncompromising approach to seriality anticipated important developments in Minimalism and Conceptual Art. In 2011, the artist's archive was donated by Paul Maenz to the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, preserving an essential record of his brief yet influential career.
Selected Collections: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunst Museum Winterthur; Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
"I assemble available things of the same kind together. These might, for example, be: objects, photographs, freestanding forms such as letters, texts, tones and sounds, film-material, etc. The results I call ‚montages‘."
Past Exhibitions
"Art is what changes existing aesthetic and social conditions by aesthetic means. Thus art is what puts in question the previous definition of art."