Reconfiguring Reality Through Collage
Claudia Peppel’s artistic practice thrives on the interplay between the familiar and the unexpected. Working primarily with analogue paper collage, she transforms pre-existing images into compositions that challenge perception, alter context, and blur the boundaries between representation and abstraction. Her approach is rooted in an acute awareness of details and remnants—those overlooked elements that, when rearranged, open up new ways of seeing. By experimenting with scale, exaggeration, and reduction, her work fosters unexpected encounters between disparate elements.
Her academic background plays a fundamental role in shaping her artistic vision. Born in Berlin and later moving to Rome to study Romance languages and literature, Peppel pursued advanced degrees at Freie Universität Berlin and TU Darmstadt. Her intellectual pursuits have long been drawn to the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism, as well as themes of waiting, failure, lists, and the uncanny. These theoretical interests inform her collages, which question the very nature of representation, revealing hidden tensions between reality and illusion. The medium itself embodies these conceptual concerns—collage is inherently about disruption, transformation, and the layering of meaning. To Peppel, it is more than just a technique; it is a fundamental mode of experiencing and interpreting the world.
Her fascination with creative upheaval and transitional states fuels her practice. She sees collage as a dialogue between absence and presence, a space where fragments of imagery interact with empty space to generate new narratives. This dynamic process allows her to explore conversion, fragmentation, and interdependency. The world, as she perceives it, is a collage in itself—constructed from remnants, juxtapositions, and incomplete stories that continuously reshape one another.
Claudia Peppel: A Career Built on Visual and Conceptual Experimentation
Peppel’s journey into the art world was driven by an innate need for creative expression. Over the years, her collages have been featured in numerous publications, including Contemporary Collage Magazine and the International Women’s Day collection by the Paris Collage Collective. Her work has also been used as book covers for Franco Cesati Editore and ICI Berlin Press, as well as in print media for Studio Bens. These diverse applications of her work demonstrate the versatility and adaptability of collage as a medium—whether presented in fine art contexts, publishing, or design.
What sets her practice apart is its embrace of spontaneity and chance. Peppel describes her process as intuitive rather than premeditated. She collects fragments of printed images, torn pages from magazines, and scattered illustrations, often without a clear purpose in mind. Certain elements—a figure, a colored contour, a particular object—immediately captivate her, triggering an instinctive response. Over time, she gathers similar shapes, textures, or hues, allowing them to accumulate until they reach a critical mass. At times, the act of tearing and rearranging happens instantaneously, resulting in compositions that feel both deliberate and serendipitous.
The background of a collage is just as crucial as its fragmented foreground. Peppel frequently uses her own photographs as backdrops, layering them with found materials to create striking contrasts. Sometimes, a dominant color or recurring theme emerges unexpectedly, guiding the composition toward a particular mood. This fluidity—where intuition, memory, and material all intersect—gives her work a dreamlike quality, where meaning remains open-ended and elusive.
Constructing Identity and Memory Through Collage
Peppel’s artistic influences span a broad spectrum, but she draws particular inspiration from contemporary artists such as Deborah Roberts, Eva Koťátková, and Frida Orupabo. Each of these artists engages with themes of identity, history, and the reconfiguration of existing imagery—concerns that resonate deeply with her own practice. Roberts, for instance, examines how social constructs of beauty and belonging shape personal identity, using collage to deconstruct and reassemble notions of selfhood. Koťátková’s Pictorial Atlas of a Girl Who Cut a Library into Pieces is especially significant to Peppel, as it reflects a meticulous engagement with memory, narrative, and the psychological dimensions of collage.
Koťátková’s work, which reconstructs an imagined schoolbook from 1980s Prague, stages complex relationships between people, objects, and ideologies. Peppel admires the way these collages evoke both personal and collective memory, creating surreal juxtapositions that destabilize conventional narratives. This same sense of disruption informs Peppel’s own work—her compositions often feel like visual echoes of forgotten moments, where disparate elements collide to form something entirely new.
For Peppel, collage is an act of reimagining rather than merely assembling. She is drawn to its ability to challenge fixed interpretations, allowing for multiple readings and unexpected connections. The power of the medium lies in its fragmentation; it mirrors the way memory works—disjointed, nonlinear, and layered with competing influences. Through her collages, Peppel not only constructs visual compositions but also engages in a deeper investigation of how images shape perception and identity.
Claudia Peppel: Pushing the Boundaries of Scale and Possibility
Although Peppel has explored other artistic forms—including sculpture and photography—collage has remained her most enduring passion. Since the early 2010s, she has devoted herself to refining this practice, continually expanding its possibilities. The physicality of cutting, tearing, and assembling paper holds a tactile appeal that digital processes cannot replicate. It is this hands-on engagement with materials that keeps her connected to the immediacy of the medium.
Her ambitions extend beyond the traditional formats of collage. One of her long-term artistic aspirations is to create a large-scale collage several meters in size—an immersive work that would envelop viewers in its intricate layers. Such a project would amplify the themes already present in her smaller compositions: fragmentation, scale shifts, and the interplay between absence and presence. Expanding her work to a monumental format would introduce new challenges, particularly in terms of spatial dynamics and composition, but it would also open up exciting possibilities for engagement and interpretation.
Peppel’s artistic journey continues to be one of constant exploration. Whether working on intimate compositions or envisioning large-scale installations, she remains committed to pushing the limits of collage. Her work serves as a testament to the power of reconfiguration—the idea that meaning is not fixed, but endlessly adaptable. In her hands, collage becomes more than just an assembly of disparate parts; it is a method of seeing, questioning, and reconstructing the world around us.
