Galerie Poll Berlin
Exhibitions
Peer Boehm. What I Really Want to Do
30 October 2026 – 9 January 2027, Opening: 29 October, 5-8 p.m.,
Welcome and artist talk at around 7 p.m.
Childhood experiences, travel adventures, and political events – all of this is stored up in our minds. Fleeting impressions and vague snapshots build up in disordered fashion into a collective reservoir of images, anchored so differently in each of us. Peer Boehm taps into this seemingly inexhaustible reservoir for the motifs of his works on canvas and paper. His often incongruous, never entirely unequivocal titles prompt viewers to make their own chains of associations.
Boehm’s third solo exhibition at Galerie Poll mainly features works created in 2025 and 2026: scenes evoking school days (“The New Girl”, “The Film Is About to Start”, “First Lesson in Textile Design”), early encounters with the opposite sex (“I Would Rather Not”), and summer holidays on crowded beaches (“It Was Warm and Comfortable in the Car”). The exhibition also includes “Berlin 1989”, a painting from 2007 that reflects on the fall of the Berlin Wall as a turning point in contemporary history.
For his works on paper, Boehm uses found printed materials such as historical sea charts and old letterhead. Drawing on them, usually with ballpoint pen, he creates a dialogue between the material he has found and his own additions. His large-format drawing “What Do You Want to Do with Your Share?” shows a boy floating on a raft across a sea chart. The motif, paper, and title evoke a treasure hunt – though Boehm never offers a single “correct” interpretation. He has also continued his series of ballpoint pen drawings on letterhead from the k.o. club, a society for avant-garde films founded in 1969 in Hannover, tracking down more film scenes relating to the sender named on the letterhead.
Boehm finds his motifs in photo albums acquired at flea markets, in illustrated magazines, or on the internet. He abstracts people and places through digital editing, simplifying the motif through light and dark contrasts to the brink of unrecognisability, before transferring it onto canvas or paper for further artistic refinement. For his paintings on canvas, Peer Boehm has developed his own glazing technique using watercolour, acrylic, and ink. At times he employs coffee or rust as painting materials, giving his motifs the appearance of faded photographs. His pictorial language is based on the principle of erasure: light and dark areas intermingle until they blur. As a result, his paintings and drawings initially appear indistinct, gradually emerging on closer inspection as though from the subconscious – like deeply personal memories.
Peer Boehm, born in Cologne in 1968, studied art history, archaeology, and German language and literature at the University of Cologne from 1990 to 1994. In 2021, he was awarded the Wesseling Art Prize, accompanied by an exhibition at the eponymous art association in 2023. His works were displayed in Berlin in 2022 at the Willy Brandt House. In 2024, a major overview exhibition of his work, featuring pieces created over a seventeen-year period, was held at the Museum Modern Art Hünfeld. His works are held in numerous private collections in Germany and internationally. Peer Boehm lives and works in Cologne, where he is represented by Galerie Anja Knoess.