Daniel Pflumm

Grieder Contemporary is delighted to present a solo exhibition of works by the artist Daniel Pflumm (*1968). Pflumm deploys a variety of media to dissect his surroundings, which are increasingly dominated by the aesthetics of advertisements, vivid corporate logos and TV images. What at first glance appears to be decoration in Pflumm’s work actually turns out to be a skilled examination of perception.

Daniel Pflumm explores the increasing mediatisation of society using looped video works, loudly coloured light boxes and silkscreen printing in the tradition of Pop and Minimal Art. The introduction of a range of video formats, the launch of the internet and the growth of consumerism have in recent years acted as societal drivers that have done much to alter society.
Pflumm’s video works consist mainly of loops of image material he comes across and records during sleepless nights spent in front of the television, and which he then re-compiles. He creates audio tracks to accompany the newly worked sequences to emphasise the rhythm of the images and reveal their innate sense of momentum.
While Pflumm’s video works present an abstracted account of the visual environment in full flow, his light boxes and screen prints disclose vivid logos and icons of the consumer culture divided into their colour and formal elements. Pflumm deconstructs the media images he comes across and separates them into their individual components, which he then sorts and reassembles. The result is essential fragments of colour and form that the observer recognises as logos of well-known companies, advertisements and TV shows. Pflumm employs a strategy of decontextualisation, with which he creates slight distortions of reality that sensitise the observer to an alternative perception of the world.
Pflumm’s use of abstraction manages to establish a new realm of the senses, which he uses to provoke the observer. The bright forms are aesthetic and appeal to the alertness of his audience. They also possess a reflective dimension by getting us to look unconsciously for the semantic references of the forms. Despite the distortion, we are surprised by the way we can recognise the elements – a phenomenon that illustrates the dominance of the image.
Pflumm’s tactics could be called poetic subversion, though the artist disapproves of categorisation of this nature. Instead, he sees himself as posing questions; he wants to know how the flood of images have altered our perceptions. He enjoys the way doubt creates discomfort. We feel like reassuring the artist when he muses in his studio in Berlin: “Video doesn’t really allow us to show much.” This statement of his resonates not so much with doubt, as with fascination – and it is precisely that which exemplifies the quality of Pflumm’s work.


The exhibition features works created by Daniel Pflumm (*1968) in recent years as well as ones he has produced especially for the exhibition at Grieder Contemporary.