Jolly Rogers

Jolly Rogers is a collection of Peter Wächtler's latest short texts, written in preparation for his two solo 2019 exhibitions at Bergen Kunsthall and Kunsthalle Zürich, and combined with a nearly complete collection of the artist's drawings and prints from recent years. The texts operate like vignettes to a larger story, and the images as unreliable illustrations to the narrative. However, the larger story never really is revealed. Each individual text, each single work, articulates itself by means of an intense focus. It is as if we were suspended in a continual zooming motion, as if the artist and author wanted to tell and show it all. But alas, such is life under the microscope: always larger than life, but at the wrong scale at a time driven by individual interests, self-optimization, and egos that stage themselves simultaneously as victims and disruptors.

Published by Bergen Kunsthall, Kunsthalle Zürich, and Sternberg Press