Hans-Peter Feldmann's Retrospective at CNP Paris

The Centre national de la photographie (CNP) in Paris presents a retrospective of German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, running from February 20 to May 13, 2002. Born in 1941 in Düsseldorf, Feldmann emerged alongside Fluxus and 1970s counterculture but remained independent. His work centers on collecting and assembling found images from newspapers, family albums, and archives, aiming to blur the line between art and non-art. Key series include small offset books (1968-1976) on banal themes like women's knees or unmade beds, Time Series capturing mundane moments, 1000 Frauen compiling amateur photos of women, and Die Toten (1999) featuring newspaper death notices. Feldmann also created a photography series of Essen (1977) for Museum Folkwang, which tourism officials disliked for its gray, unremarkable views. In 1994, he filled Vienna's 3,000 billboards with family snapshots for Museum in Progress, and replicated the Austrian weekly Profil with only images. He avoids imposing meaning, inviting viewers to interpret freely. Feldmann runs a publishing house and a shop selling unsigned, unnumbered works to resist speculation. The exhibition later travels to Fotomuseum Winterthur (summer) and Museum Ludwig Cologne (winter).