Peter BUSCH | Southern Cross

Peter Busch – Kreuz des Südens (Southern Cross)

Imagine you have a surprise egg in front of you.
You tear open the foil, crack the chocolate in half, and reveal the yellow plastic egg inside. Maybe you are a bit excited – collector's figurine or mini crane as a kit: one does not (yet) know. In short: in eager anticipation, you have uncovered three layers in order to get to what's behind. Congratulations! You are actually in that very situation right now:
a conglomerate of surprise moments, paired with the joy of discovery. You've already removed the foil with your gallery entry, now you can continue layer by layer and experience surprises.
Because Peter Busch's works have surprised me. For years now. And they just don't stop. Here's a detail that certainly wasn't on this painting yesterday; there, a shadowy hint that activates associations and sends thoughts on expeditions. Peter Busch's works have taken me traveling through the country, tracing his hidden wall painting on the grounds of the Baumwollspinnerei or even opening already closed exhibition rooms (legally!), they have led me to his friends and my friends to him.
A scholarship brought Peter Busch a longer stay in Hamburg in 2022/23. Their artistic creations feed into the current exhibition. On these paintings one encounters figures who are in the midst of their respective actions, in which we are allowed to participate for a moment – as if someone had stopped time with a brief call.
Busch's works are strangely unobtrusive. They peek around the corner with subtle observations, as if they wanted to get a feel for it first, who is paying attention to them.
They are not in a hurry, let alone in need of taking center stage. Discreetly and confidently, someone is at work in these pictures who must have a very fine gift for observation. Someone who can lend maximum mimic expressiveness to faces that are barely figuratively concrete. Someone who can unfold entire networks of relationships between people (and animals) through constellations of colored areas.
Peter Busch seems to me to be more of the type whose interest is aroused by the mini crane truck in the surprise egg. Disregarding the rolled-up instructions, he presumably installs hydraulics into it with concentrated naturalness, which will not be worth mentioning to him.
His art, however, is not only worthy of mention, but above all worth of multi-layered observation.
Incidentally, you can recognize the surprise egg expert by the fact that he tries to get an idea of the contents in advance by slightly shaking and listening, which creates an additional level of suspense. I wouldn't be surprised to see one or the other wandering through the exhibition eavesdropping to Peter Busch's paintings.
(But please don't shake the paintings!)

Sandra Oppmann