Peter Wächtler exhibition at Haus am Waldsee explores doubt and tradition

A survey exhibition of works by the German artist Peter Wächtler has opened at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, bringing together sculpture, animation, text and sound pieces that examine themes of tradition, uncertainty and personal crisis. The show presents Wächtler's output across multiple media, offering visitors a view of an artistic practice built around sustained questioning rather than fixed answers.

Wächtler, who has exhibited internationally over the past decade, is known for work that resists easy categorisation. His pieces often combine humour with melancholy, drawing on folklore, popular culture and personal reflection to probe questions about belief, creativity and the passage of time.

Among the material included in the exhibition is a letter Wächtler wrote to himself in 2012, during a period of personal crisis. In it, he addressed himself directly, urging perseverance through turmoil using the image of a wave.

"Sei eine Welle, Peter," he wrote, in the original German. "Steig' auf und geh unter. Trage und verschlinge. Sprüh' Gischt und kabbel' dich. Schäum' und schwappe am Abend langsam und tröstend gegen die müden Ufer deines Lebens. Aber bleib' in Bewegung. Mach weiter, immer, immer weiter!"

The passage, roughly translated, instructs the artist to rise and fall, to carry and consume, to churn and struggle, and finally to wash gently and consolingly against the tired shores of his own life by evening, all the while remaining in motion and continuing onward without pause. The letter functions within the exhibition as a kind of personal manifesto, one that curators and critics have linked to the restless, searching quality of Wächtler's broader body of work.

That same searching quality extends to the artist's public statements about his own practice. Wächtler has described himself as being in a state of persistent uncertainty regarding his work, a position that runs counter to the more declarative stances often associated with contemporary art practice. Rather than offering resolutions, his pieces tend to hold open the questions they raise, whether those questions concern inherited artistic traditions, religious or folkloric figures such as the devil, or the broader uncertainties of making art at all.

Haus am Waldsee, a institution in Berlin's Zehlendorf district long associated with contemporary art exhibitions, has staged the show as a comprehensive look at Wächtler's career. The venue has historically hosted solo presentations by artists working across varied media, and the current exhibition continues that pattern by assembling pieces that span sculpture, moving image and text-based work under a single roof.

Visitors to the exhibition encounter a range of formats rather than a single signature medium. Wächtler has worked with animation in some of his projects, using it alongside more traditional sculptural forms and written texts that accompany or stand independently of the visual works. This mixture of approaches has been a consistent feature of his practice, allowing him to move between registers of seriousness and levity within a single body of work.

Critics who have viewed the exhibition point to the 2012 letter as a key to understanding the emotional undercurrent of the show. The document, written during a difficult period in the artist's life, reveals a side of his practice less often visible in his finished gallery pieces: a direct, unguarded address to himself that nonetheless echoes the themes of persistence and transformation found throughout his wider output.

The exhibition does not attempt to resolve the contradictions in Wächtler's approach to his own work. Instead, it presents his doubt as a structuring principle, one that shapes the pacing and tone of the show as a whole. Works dealing with tradition sit alongside pieces that reference the devil as a figure of mischief and moral ambiguity, while text-based elements offer glimpses into the artist's private reflections on his own creative process.

No closing date for the exhibition has been specified in materials released alongside its opening. Haus am Waldsee has presented the show as part of its ongoing programme of contemporary art exhibitions in the German capital, continuing its role as a venue for artists whose work spans multiple disciplines and formats.