Peter Wächtler

The work relaxes you. You design a massive freeway oriented north that would better connect the suburbs. You tell everyone you know about it at every opportunity. Four parks in one neighborhood, but for different target groups.

The scales are tipping in your favor. You come up with concepts against aging and urban dreariness. This is celebrated, and you end up throwing up in the stairwell of your multi-generational house. An old man helps you up. You're still on schedule, but you're sluggish, your face droops into your food. Deductions, agreements, and exams, self-empowerment, design, evidence, impact, change—your future has no room left in your pants. You’re now taking the partnership thing seriously.

Then you start thinking about industry. For a while, you buy everything you need at the hardware store. Your food too. You get into fights with people because they call you a tinkerer. You have a lot to do, but your observations become rarer. You lose perspective, so it’s back to the models. The task is clear: a vineyard in France, a new bottling station, a wine press, primarily solar-powered, modern winemaking. You look at your northern feeder road and all the plastic windows you’ve tailored to the local weather. The weather in France. Reality. You feel proud. Over the Pentecost holidays, you cut deeply into your hand and get stitched up with three stitches. The doctor is in a mood you will never have a right to. He wishes you all the best. You have three weeks left.

Back home, you look at the plans; everything feels academic and stiff, and you can’t change it.

From the traffic and sight axes, you retreat to the bedroom. Each day shapes its terrain from the inside out. The death marshes. You check your girlfriend's pill packaging and take vitamins that show no effect. You are alone with your time in your room, and it swells like construction foam. It’s getting tight. You need to reduce things; your teachers urge you to hit something hard. You go drinking with the cool kids, and they say you don’t have to do anything. Then you become somewhat limited. You think about final social metaphors: light and shadow. You ask the genre for help, but you have nothing to do with other worlds. You try to meet others but have nothing to do with their whispers. You try to be right in the middle of it. Soon, you miss your old partner.

The studies are exhausting you, just as they should. Your fatigue becomes genuine again, which is terrible, especially historically. Your friends advise you to hang in there. You seek out others who think faster and are always on the move. Your French vineyard becomes an anecdote you drunkenly share with them. They should learn the truth about your origins. You really started very small. You only look up now. There, above the gate of the grand library, it is written in golden letters: They will trample you into the dust.

But it’s not so bad, and it really was a long time ago. You’re now trying to enjoy the simple things. You have no idea about geopolitical hotspots and constantly tell yourself that you don’t have to. You go into the countryside; you like the times of day, the seasons, you cook seasonally and build your own furniture. You think about pets and speculate on a dignified life in the province, surrounded by sheep, chickens, and a dog for which you already have three names in mind. You wouldn’t need anyone else, but you have a cat allergy. Sometimes you already place a candle in the window and ring the neighbor's doorbell to take his hand and offer your help. He has also studied, but you don’t know what, certainly under a completely different system.

He says he doesn’t need help, especially not from you.

Biographie Peter Wächtler
PETER WÄCHTLER
geboren / born 1979 in Hannover
lebt und arbeitet / lives and works in Brüssel
AUSBILDUNG / EDUCATION - Peter Wächtler
1999-2004 Studium Freie Kunst an der Bauhaus-
Universität-Weimar bei Professor Fritz
Rahmann und am Kent Institue of Art and Design,
Canterbury, England
EINZELAUSSTELLUNGEN / SOLO EXHIBITIONS – Peter
Wächtler
2012
“STUDIUM MAXIMUM”, kuratiert von Christian Nagel,
Reisebürogalerie Diko Reisen, Köln.
“Das Kino im Alten Mühlenviertel”, Galerie Lars Friedrich,
Berlin.
2011
“The Set”, Etablissement d‘en Face, Brüssel.
2010
“New Album”, SIC, Brüssel.
2009
“Sustainability”, Elisa Platteau Galerie, Brüssel.
“Songbook”, in Zusammenarbeit mit Andreas Wegner,
Kunstraum, München.
“Depression Glass”, Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar,
Nietzsche-Archiv, Weimar,
Installation für die Konferenz „Moderne und Historizität“
2008
“Omen”, Aktualisierungsraum, Hamburg.
2006
“Concert – Look back in Anger”, galerie 35, Berlin.
2004
“Singer”, Bauhaus-Museum, Weimar.

GRUPPENAUSSTELLUNGEN / GROUP EXHIBITIONS – Peter
Wächtler
2012
“Un-Scene II”, Wiels Centre d‘Art Contemporain, Brüssel.
2011
“Anfang gut. Alles Gut.”, Basso, Berlin und Kunsthaus
Bregenz, Bregenz.
“Melanchotopia”, Witte de With, Center for
Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.

Herzliya Biennial, Herzliya, Israel.
“The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Magick
Truths”, D21 Kunstraum Leipzig.
“Acts of Refusal”, Art House, Tartu, Estland.
2010
“Künstler der Galerie”, Elisa Platteau Galerie, Brüssel.
“The City is forever. Not me.”, Stephen Lawrence Gallery,
London.
2009
“Morality: From Love to Legal”, Witte de With, Center for
Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.
“Finishing off a Genre: Last Money-Paintings”, Atelier
Brunnhuber und Vardag, Wien.
“Isomopolis”, Etablissement d’en Face, Brüssel.
2008
“Un.Sichtbar”, Deutschvilla, Strobl, Österreich.
“Sieg über die Sonne”, Aktualisierungsraum, Hamburg.
“Re-Education. You too can be like us.”, HAU-Hebbel am
Ufer, Berlin
2006
“The Culture of Fear I + II”, Halle 14, Baumwollspinnerei,
Leipzig, ACC Gallery,
Weimar.
“Innenaustattung”, Ausstellungsraum Bleicherstrasse,
Hamburg.
“Contragolpe – Reenacting a failed operation”, Karl-Marx
Allee, Berlin.
2005
“Transmission”, Neues Museum, Weimar.
“Das Vermögen der Kunst”, Kunsthaus, Dresden.
“Most Haunted 05″, Galeria AG7, Riga.

VERÖFFENTLICHUNGEN UND REZENSIONEN /
PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS – Peter Wächtler
2012
THE SET
Künstlerbuch
Hrsg.: Etablissement d‘en face, SIC, Brüssel
Butterfly Room / CC / Thomba di Kha
Kurzgeschichten, Ausstellungskataloge Richard Venlet
Hrsg.: Grotto Publications
2009
Songbook
Katalog zur Ausstellung
Zusammenarbeit mit Andres Wegner
Nancy and Tonya
Text zur Ausstellung „I kiss your ectoplasm like I would a
shark“
von Danai Anesiadou im Kiosk, Ghent / Belgien
In der Pandurenklause
Artikel für die Zeitschrift Lichtung
Zusammenarbeit mit Miriam Visaczki
2008
Un.Sichtbar
Ausstellungskatalog
Czerny Verlag, Wien / Österreich
Das Vermögen der Kunst
Ausstellungskatalog
Böhlau Verlag, Köln
2005
Kunstreport
Jährliche Veröffentlichung
mit verschiedenen Autoren
Transmission
AusstellungskataloG
Neues Museum, Weimar
2003
HMP-Her Majesty’s Prison
Broschüre mit Texten und Zeichnugen
zum Gefängnis von Canterbury
Concert
CD, 8 Songs, Booklet
2002
Parkett, Nr. 67
„Mimetische Ausschnitte“
Rita Kersting
2001
Public Relation
Projektkatalog Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Abenteuer optional
Essay published in Finger, Nr. 9