Irene Peschick
The Deviation of the Gaze

Irene Peschick's artistic project "The Deviation of the Gaze" complements the gallery of "Cityscapes" in the permanent exhibition.

With photography, drawing and poetic texts, Irene Peschick creates a contemporary, intermedial, artistic-abstract view of Frankfurt.
Born in Kassel, Peschick studied at the local art academy with Prof. Arnold Bode, the renowned founder of documenta. Afterwards, she moved to Frankfurt, which became her main site of artistic production and exhibition. She returned to Frankfurt in 2021, where she lives and works today. The Historical Museum of Frankfurt will preserve the artist's complete oeuvre, therefore making it accessible to the wide public.

On display will be works that touch on key moments in her artistic career – particularly from the 1990s to the present day – and thus approach an essence of her oeuvre. In large format and in black and white, the photographic work "Der Quergestellte Augenblick der Zeit" [The Diagonal Instant of Time] from 1991, a sequence of photographic flags, evokes a subjective, abstract image of Frankfurt. In this work, Peschick refers to the semiotics of the ancient Chinese wisdom book "I Ging" (Book of Changes, 3rd century BC), which influenced her entire body of work. In the interplay of photography, drawing and poetry, Peschick's reflections on the dynamic between life and abstraction is marked by severity, silence and distance. The central theme is the permanence of change and time-perception.
"Zeitzerstreut" [Time-scattered] or "Time-chips", "Verstand + Atem" [Reason + Breath] are titles of past exhibitions: the non-measurable time coalesces into the instant of the frenzied rhythm of the city and its people.

"DISSOLVING INTO VELOCITY", says Peschick.

The way the city affects its people is witnessed by the artist's "Emoji-Blicke" [Emoji-Gazes] drawings (2014-2022). With just a few precise lines, she captures the signals of the smartphone language, the acceleration and placelesseness of communication. "Molecular communication", "Everthing is everywhere" – Peschick's poetic texts combined with her other media make the artist's work a testimony of transcience and duration.

"Irene Peschick. The Deviation of the Gaze" complements a longstanding exploration by the HMF of the work by women photographers of Frankfurt, which will receive an extensive presentation in 2024 in a special exhibition.

A cooperation with the Women's Department Frankfurt

Curator
Dr. Dorothee Linnemann
dorothee.linnemann[at]stadt-frankfurt.de
+49 69 212-36443

Press and public relations
Karin Berrío
karin.berrio[at]stadt-frankfurt.de
+49 69 212-37776