Pilar Corrias represents Peppi Bottrop

 

Peppi Bottrop: The "subject matter" for me is always painting, which can't be explained in terms of content but rather is about the process itself: velocity and a visceral approach to expression. Marks and gesture give away the varying degrees of traffic and temporal interruptions. Everything is very sensitive to space. It is more about employing architectural backdrops for expressive abstract narratives than forcing a particular subject matter. These narratives, of course, can deal with different things.

PC: When you say architectural backdrops…

 

PB: Architectural backdrops can be cityscapes. In an abstract way. Architectural backdrops are a construct of lines. They can also be a spiderweb or the roots of a tree. The grid of a barrier or the silver shine of water.

PC: From where do you derive these backdrops? Your painting VanLeer, 2018, for example, is packed with traces of what look like high-rise buildings. You were born in Bottrop, in Germany's Ruhrgebiet district and currently live in Cologne, and, in recent years, you've also lived in Los Angeles, Mexico City and Dusseldorf. How, if at all, has the architecture of these cities informed your work? Have you found that the architecture of certain cities is more conducive to painting than others?

 

PB: Every city glows differently. it is interesting to see how some cities stagnate with their 1960s construction, while others are forced by nature and economy to constantly rebuild themselves. This obviously creates a very stimulating dynamism. A dynamic that certainly affects me but not directly my way of painting. I can paint anywhere.

PC: I imagine your interest in architecture has informed your predilection for using industrial materials, too: coal, rust and so on.

 

PB: Recently I've been interested in the logic of time, and materials like rust, iron, coal can be harnessed to inform or underline this idea. A patina of historiography. Coal itself is memory. There is of course an architectural association, too.

PC: The titles of your paintings are often derived from fragments of words which you happen upon in books and essays. Do you actively search for these phrases and which comes first, the title or the painting? 

 

PB: They come together. Sometimes later.

PC: What are you currently reading? 

 

PB: Iain Hamilton Grant: Die Natur Der Natur.

PC: Do you read in the studio?

 

PB: I like small books that I can carry around with me.

PC: Thank you.