This painting is shaped by treating the material without respect, using destruction as a principle, sometimes playfully, while simultaneously building up energy in the picture. The artwork proceeds utilizing improvisation.

Painting is about the surface tension of different media: canvas, fabrics, paint, and prints approach materiality as a surface condition. The surface (an overpainted weather chart by the Ritz Hotel, Paris) is configured as an architecture to be dismantled. Start somewhere, put it down, then move it somewhere else.

On the one hand, Peter Vahlefeld plays with the notion of information loss. On the other, he adds a process that disrupts that reveals flaws and cracks on the pictorial surface, which is sanded down to a bare canvas.

This working process is about continuous re-assembly, re-organization, and re-construction of the image, dodging between creation, ruin, and epiphany using oils and metallic pigments like gold, copper, and rust.