Over the past decade Peter Piller has compiled thousands of images –from unspectacular newspaper photographs to old postcards or abandoned archives. His body of work has been created through re-ordering and staging new and existing images, giving them a new meaning through this re-arrangements and the making of unexpected associations. Piller’s archivistic and archaeological operations on this visual material provide a way of understanding how meaning is produced through pictures. The Archiv Peter Piller, which consists largely of images from German regional newspapers, contains more than 100 groups of collected images which complexly reflect Piller‘s original search for the unintentionally aesthetic and noteworthy image. The artist has been working on his Archiv Peter Piller since 1998: it deals with the re-interpretation and the re-presentation of images and archives of images already published in other contexts. In his artistic work to date, in addition to the images from regional newspapers, he has also utilised the photographs of a commercial aerial photography archive, images from the internet and from a Dutch factory newspaper as well as a Swiss insurance group‘s photographic documentation of damage claims. Piller subsequently transfers this diverse material into his own ordering systems, which he then gives found or invented titles. His sets of drawings (Bürozeichnungen, Peripheriewanderungen) and his numerous art books are further important aspects of his oeuvre. In his precise observation and with his subtle sense of humour, Piller reflects upon media images‘ potential and the possibilities and limits of photographic and conceptual art. Peter Piller (b.1968) studied at the HFBK (University of Fine Arts of Hamburg) and has been a professor at the HGB Leipzig – (Academy of Visual Arts) in Leipzig since 2006. His awards include the Rubens-Förderpreis der Stadt Siegen (2003), the Albrecht-Renger-Patzsch-Preis of the Dietrich Oppenberg-Stiftung Essen (2003), the Ars-Viva-Förderpreis of the Bund Deutscher Industrie (2004) and the Edwin Scharff-Prieis of the Hamburg Ministry of Culture (2011), among others. Piller has published his ten-volume set of artist‘s books of the Archive Peter Piller as well as other artist‘s books and catalogues at Revolver Publishing by VVV. Important solo exhibitions include those at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen (2003), the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam (2005/06), the Kunsthaus Glarus (2007), the Salzburger Kunstverein (2007), the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2009) and the Kunstverein Braunschweig (2011), among others. Public collections (selection): Bundeskunstsammlung Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden – Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Museum Ludwig Köln, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Frac Nord Pas-de-Calais (Dunquerque), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea (Santiago de Compostela), Fotomuseum Winterthur.