Stefan Peters researches the possibilities of painting. He reduces the medium to its most elementary form: the gesture of the brush stroke. A painting results, after all, from interaction between the countless strokes that interweave, overlap and blend on its surface. By making the brush stroke autonomous and fully exploiting its suggestive possibilities, Peters demonstrates that the illusory power of paint is such that, even at a microlevel, it can evoke complete landscapes, panoramas, river valleys and cloudy skies.

 

In his recent work, dream world and reality merge into one another. In his paintings, animations and installations, Stefan Peters not only creates images, but also sets out in search of their process of origination: the formation of the image. He explores the imitative qualities of painting, but knows that reality can also be evoked through alienating effects, image fragments or even the futility of a brush stroke. Just as silence makes the finest sound audible, Peters creates quietude in his paintings, so that even the smallest ripple becomes visually visible and acquires meaning. This is why, for Stefan Peters, creation does not only encompass the search for something new; using painting as his principle expressive means, it is for him always a rediscovery through which that which already exists is poetically revealed.

 

Stefan Peters studied at the MAD Faculty in Genk and at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. In 2016 he was a laureate of the STRABAG Art Award in Vienna.

Work by Stefan Peters can be found in many private collections as in important corporate and museum collections such as those in the Netherlands; DSM, AKZO NOBEL artfoundation, Van Gogh Huis, ING Bank, DELA, AMC Art Collection, VU MC Art Collection, Art Collection Rijksoverheid in The Hague