peter buggenhout.

Konrad Fischer Galerie is proud to announce the first German solo show of Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout.
Peter Buggenhout (born 1963 in Dendermonde, Belgium) challenges the state of contemporary sculpture by introducing quite unusual materials: waste, household dust, animal hair, blood and intestines. The basic structure of his amorphous but very complex sculptures is created out of abject materials: trash, debris, rubbish. Oscillating between indescribable apocalyptic chaos and the quietness of a Chinese scholar stone, these works are referring to nothing else but themselves.
In his series “The Blind leading the Blind” - named after the famous painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder - Peter Buggenhout assembles pieces of waste and covers them with thick layers of affixed household dust. His series of wall-based sculptures entitled “Gorgo” is made of waste textiles, horse hair and black animal blood. The title references the Medusa legend: art functions as a shield mirroring an almost unbearable reality. A third series in Peter Buggenhout’s oeuvre is named “Mount Ventoux”: it is formed out of bleached animal intestines stretched over polymorphous shapes out of polyurethane foam. The title goes back to the poet Petrarca who was trying to catalogue the whole world but overlooked the mountain just in front of him.
In the stacks of waste material used as a core for his installations the process of selecting abject materials is completely “independent of aesthetic considerations”, as the artist comments. There is no specific aim for a particular form. And there is no context. Oftentimes Peter Buggenhout works on several sculptures simultaneously. A sculpture is finished when it is completely abstract and devoid of all symbolic content.