The
Grand
Opening
PETER
DREHER
and
SOPHIE
HUNGER
Hurray, hurray.
Today, today. I opened a bar.
Hurray, hurray.
Today, today. I opened a bar.
Peter Dreher, Tag um Tag guter Tag, starting 1974, oil on canvas, each 25 x 20 cm
Over the last forty-four years Peter Dreher created a series of roughly five thousand works, depicting the very same glass again and again. Starting in the 1970s, when realist painting was a provocation in itself, Dreher (b. 1932 in Germany) concentrated on the most basic of things: “I imposed this apparent restriction on myself in order to focus all my energy on what is really essential and important to me: painting,” he said. That everything becomes abstract, if we look closely enough, is just one of the many things we can learn from Dreher in his pursuit of art for art’s sake: repetition is used as a philosophical concept and a means of liberation. Here, musician Sophie Hunger salutes Dreher with an excerpt from her song “I Opened a Bar” (2018), in which she recounts for whom she once hypothetically opened a bar.