Peter Friedl. Four or Five Roses

28.02.2004 — 14.03.2004

With the work “Four or Five Roses” continued Peter Friedl his investigation of stereotypes of monologic language. Peter Friedl has put together numerous children’s monologues from interviews and conversations which he had on playgrounds in South Africa. Carefully transcribed and translated into English from various South African languages, the “monologues” will be published in the form of a book.
Friedl transposes the subjectively outlined reports and stories of the four to 14-year-olds into the context of art through a conceptually concentrated form of text. Although the monologues are characterized by children’s language, they refer at the same time to complex social connections which, in their abstract and form of presentation, reach far beyond the supposed idyll of the children’s playground.
The monologues are accompanied by a photographic work by Peter Friedl that engages not so much with the social potential of children’s playgrounds, but rather describes them as a concrete ‘location’. Under the title, Playgrounds, he has taken photographs all over the world since 1995 which document the diverse phenomena of playgrounds.

On the occasion of the exhibition a catalogue was published.