On closer examination of Ruehle's (born 1975 in Dresden) cityscapes - all of them connected with the artist's biography - one first perceives a silhouette being in a distant and nearly disappearing future. The above extending heaven seems vast and endless. The foreground remaining in vagueness may be interpret as masses of land or water appearing from nowhere. Place and timelessness facing those cosmic distance are reminding the contingency of our existence. Confusing but beautiful at the same moment are these landscapes when we make us aware their colour and width from which it seems that a lot of order and harmony comes from. But still they are deserted. Not even the lonely monk at the sea by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) – with whom Peter Ruehle not only has in common the relation to Dresden – shares this endless space with us and makes it less inhospitable.
What is reality and what is fiction? Trying to decode the cityscapes in their topographic substance it can be noticed soon that just a few things are corresponding with the places named in the titels of the paintings. Except for some recognizable points a lot of things are removed or exist only as assertion. Numerous green areas or expanses of water are added, many a cupola is to ascribe to the changes that Ruehle carries out at the cities. With great meticulousness and fine painting pretending a precise and documentary mimesis, he leads us into a made-up world full with his inventions to show us how it could be in a better or in a negative way too.