The art of the happy message 
The art of our time seems itself slowly of that to separate demons of the "pure form", of which idea that the reality of the picture is to be diverted out of pure intellect here and represents as a construction a new Absolutum, that is sublime over each creation.
The art as a homeland, when the art reflection simply, when propaganda, when Provokation of the Bourgois vis-à-vis, the art as a biting irony, that the threatening reality trotzt to escape that discovers everywhere dangers and them tried in that she created herself characteristic worlds, that goes irrevocably lost art as a protest or as a scream of the despair the art, that needs a code, that however with the context of the time, that passes.
If one leafs today in the last edition of the Propyläen art story, the volume 13, that represents the story of the art of the last 50 years until about 1975, one finds there no starting point for the art Peter Gerlachs. Peter Gerlach and its art, that gives for the world of the reality expression to an immense fascination, is also not with its being to escape that of the reality tried in that it convicts the art for eternal constructing. Also in the "constructing", the sense of the art of Peter Gelach does not cultivate, but rather in the "Ent cover" and in the "openly cash". The artist he constructs weave no "new worlds" in that in the belief to be able to find there a new homeland and in which so many artists perceived a new danger. With the Zauberlehrling- myth, Gerlach has few to do because he understands himself as a component of this world. It discovers wants us also this world for us and the truth of this world it obvious.
The draft of its displays lies therein that the großformatigen pictures Gerlachs are commented on by its graphic eets and bring therewith the full chip expanse of its artistic statements on the expression.
The graphic eets differ substantially of the pictures of the artist and to be sure not only in the technology, in the shade, in the format or in the atmosphere. 200In the area of the graphic,
Gerlach seems brought already mobilized to mediate its philoso- phical reflection over nature its living prin- ciple and being to the expression to have, around then - -in its pictures the happy message of the reality of nature obviously to to us. In this manner the remarkable dialec-tics of the human conversation with the nature universe,with which eternally living, that permanently bearing announce, becomes here, that changes even the stones to nodules and the rocks to the lap of the
mother earth and that swears to the being of the life in the connection of the internal secret with the joy of the open beards.
The graphic arts Gerlachs presses sound therefore nature in that in, into the roots of the original myth, that in its appearance -in the pictures -the enthusiasm, the holy enthusiasm for the visible läBt. Baptized in the myth, the artist goes at the reality up to, and he so first can it as a joy and as a light when life perceive and swear to and as a color. In order to be able to avoid each superficiality and each generalization, selects Peter Gerlach for its view of the reality the perspective of a Teleobjektives that cancels the depth and puts the single layers on each other. So the abundance is discovered in the fragment, that settles the being of its pictures.
In the pictures of the artist, technologies emerge, that let think of the Collage, at some, that Surrealismus characteristic art handles, at a few things, what stamps the Hyperrealismus. Yet this way does not lead to the understanding of Gerlachs works. Because the Lallen of the destroyed world of a real Collage, the uncanny and threatening of the Surrealismus and the hell of the UnterbewuBten is missing with it. What separates Peter Gerlach from the Hyperrealismus, is again above all its strong aversion against each alienation of the fragment. Its pictures demonstrate permanently its connection with the total reality that is reality of nature. The picture frame excises carefully Fraquemente in order let perceive the sense of the entire in them. Who does not understand that and regards a work solely as a game, that Peter Gerlachs does not grasp also the mythical poetic contents of the artistic message. The poetry, which can itself in the littlest open beard, and that only therefore, because it appears clearly as a part of the general poetry of the integral universe to nature, when the truth of the microcosm.
The soft realism Peter Gerlachs understands to call all possible into the picture and it, then as an acquaintance, confidential when component of the homeland to define nature. One believes in also this soft world because one simultaneously learns, to what extent stone to the brother stone becomes the tree the brother tree and the fish to the relative of the person. One perceives also in the works Gerlachs how its universe limits itself not only to the purely "natural", how also that apparently stillive the works of the person in its abandonment, the loss of its function, its thrown away its yet at the general nature world participate. Once through human hand touches, retain it the life for always and grow into the world of nature in. The art Peter Gerlachs goes the new way of the current person, the age old way, the way into the Urbereiche of our forgotten homeland.