Peter Holst Henckel

PETER HOLST HENCKEL

LEPIDOPTERIST HISTORY

Peter Holst Henckel employs art's aesthetic and alluring potential to tell of a chaotic world and of human injustice.

World of Butterflies, 2002

Description
68 framed pictures hang in ruler-straight lines in a large rectangle, all of them almost the same. They are numbered in the top right-hand corner, and show a butterfly with Latin nomenclature, geographic location and a historic date written underneath.

Upon closer scrutiny the various butterfly wings reveal a series of press photos of miscellaneous subjects: coverage of wars, demonstrations, protesting men, etc. The photographs are layered underneath the butterfly wings' own patterns.

About the work
World of Butterflies is an encyclopaedic registration of species of butterfly from all over the world. Holst Henckel has combined the butterflies with a corresponding number of press photographs taken from the world's hot spots. Thus he relates, on the one hand the Western world's manner of recording and charting the species, and on the other the staggering number of violent and potentially violent conflicts that have characterised the twentieth century.
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Holst Henckel's art in general
Holst Henckel sees art inextricably bound up with the rest of the world and thus it makes no sense to see art as expressions of its own laws and aesthetic principles. The concrete outcome of that is Holst Henckel's inclusion of non-artistic image types, first and foremost photographs that he finds in papers and magazines. Thus art is a means to interpret and understand the world. Social, political and economical aspects affect art. 
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Litterature
"Peter Holst Henckel. World of Butterflies" (text by Andreas Brøgger) Galleri Specta, København, 2004