Peter Land Denmark, b. 1966

PETER LAND (°1966. Aarhus, Denmark.) is one of Denmark’s leading contemporary artists. He makes performances, paintings, drawings, videos, sculptures… all with the same trademark tragi-comedic flair.

The ambitions and failures of man as he struggles to find balance and meaning are the recurrent source for absurd situations and compositions. Simultaneously dark and funny, hopeless and light, he never shuns the extreme, and we are confronted with our own ‘all too human’-ness, reminding us of how much we are concerned with our identity and how it is perhaps determined by the failure rather than by the becoming of our ‘selves’.

The subconscious and the self are explored by blurring the boundaries between memories and expression, children’s games and nightmares, desperation and the idyllic… The surreal and the grotesque ignite an existential alienation, and we are left unsettled but amused.

 

Land’s works have been featured in numerous exhibitions across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, including solo shows at Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, Denmark; the New Museum, New York, NY; and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Land represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2005.