A.R Penck: Between Fire and Ice
In 2008, following the Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Kiel in Germany, the Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris devoted a retrospective to AR Penck, which allowed the French public to discover the strength and extent of work of this great German artist to so secret character. After his early works underground in East Germany, where the halls were exposed its magnificent series of Standart in 1970-72 and his large paintings, including the famous Weltbild and Systembild , made 鈥嬧�媏xplicit the basis for its approach art: the search for a pictorial language understandable and reproducible by all, based on the use of simplified figures, signals and symbols.
This new exhibition from 4 November 2011 to January 7, 2012, the fifth at the gallery since 1996 , will unveil his latest paintings, fruit of four years of work since 2007. Entitled Between fire and ice , this exhibition will give us the latest investigations of pictorial AR Penck, in this constant oscillation which is his between abstraction and figuration, between expressing his own feelings and construction aids.
In 1961, when he created his first painting called Weltbild in response to the construction of the Berlin Wall, Penck trying to get rid of his first creations influenced by impressionism and expressionism. He needed a "reduced capacity" to access the abstract, considered here as a key to achieving the universality of pictorial expression. The Standart , the human figure with refined shapes appeared in 1964, is the perfect illustration of this approach which proceeds from an attempt at systematic classification actions and visual interactions. Meanwhile, in the 60's, the artist, very interested by cybernetics and information theory, is engaged in other experiments with plastic Systembild , "tables-systems" where the figures are in motion, such as "little men-traits that send signals and information ". This approach very didactic paint mixes increasingly over the years to the expressionist vision of the subject, following the vision of the artist's reactions to events and the world around him. Thus, in the 1980s, after passing to the west, its palette is enriched with many colors, contrasting with that, reduced from previous years underground. The chromatic scale used then, bright or dark depends on the vagaries of his discovery of Western societies, between hope and disillusionment ... Today, the exhibition Between fire and ice summarizes the latest thinking from AR Penck on the balance between the visualization of his emotions, so a more expressionist painting and chaotic, and the radical composition of a methodical mind after a cold and neutral. It takes about a particular emphasis in relation to the exhibition on the methods of painting , which took place at the gallery from November 17, 2000 to January 13, 2001, where Penck established a dialogue with Descartes, seeing the foundations of the Discourse on Method is a similarity with his own creative process. The tables already then alternated between figuration and abstraction, in a clear enough distinction between the one and the other, depending on the subject, as was under the representation (the face painter to the philosopher) or theoretical discourse.
Today, the new paintings, one finds this confrontation between extremes, reflecting Penck's vision of our contemporary world. The rigor of a city in winter ( Stadt im Winter , 2007) has thus oppose the warm spirit of the natural elements, the sun and volcanoes, so well illustrated in Elementarkr盲fte, 2009. Most of these new compositions are much more complex, incorporating in them the whole duality of approach Penck, expressionistic representations of emotions and disorderly mingling with a didactic iconography, minimum and radical theories after painting. Thus, in the table which gives its name to the exhibition, " the fire of the term impulsive and cold construction confront "as the artist points out himself. Penck really wants to show us the truth , whether plastic, emotional or historical, is not located in the extreme but it emerges, rather, the clash between two opposites. The artist alludes to the difficulty to coexist abstraction and figuration, the emotional and the rational, plastic IPSAS questions on its analysis of our geo-political reality. Trennung (separation), table set up in 2009, is and a division of both intellectual and political, with a black man in a space located outside the red and white that stands next to a white man trapped in a confined space.
Of the twenty or so works on display, many of them include the representation of a serpent, such Sehnsucht und Hoffnung (Hope and Desire), 2009, or Halluzination , 2009. Penck sees the snake as a pet especially mystical, embodying a very strong desire, and had also made 鈥嬧�媋 painting entitled Snake in the night during the fall of the Berlin Wall to include the aspirations of the East Germans who wanted all the West. In the table Klarheit der Vokal (Clarity of vowels), 2009, the snake comes in reference to Surrealism and its quest for a balance between two seemingly contradictory states, namely the dream and reality, the 'dream and the theoretical Interior ... A red snake that symbolizes the foundation of the desire here is to slip in a tangle of highly structured vowels and consonants on the other hand, symbolizing the foundations of the mind. Penck is a nod to the Rainy Taxi Dali, installation looks goofy, conducted at the International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1938, where a model was installed in a taxi equipped with a shower, after 15 days The lady was covered with snails and became the portrait of Dorian Gray, then a work of art a surreal point of view! The 23 paintings comprising this exhibition are a reflection of the maturity plastic has today ' Today the German artist reached the point of fulfillment he found in a painting is expressionistic gestures but with much more limited than that of the early years, while in the context of his theories pictorial which are no longer confined to its original plastic looking, mostly idiomatic. More than 30 years after its passage to the West, the artist seems to have finally gained some peace of mind!
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In 2008, following the Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Kiel in Germany, the Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris devoted a retrospective to AR Penck, which allowed the French public to discover the strength and extent of work of this great German artist to so secret character. After his early works underground in East Germany, where the halls were exposed its magnificent series of Standart in 1970-72 and his large paintings, including the famous Weltbild and Systembild , made 鈥嬧�媏xplicit the basis for its approach art: the search for a pictorial language understandable and reproducible by all, based on the use of simplified figures, signals and symbols.
This new exhibition from 4 November 2011 to January 7, 2012, the fifth at the gallery since 1996 , will unveil his latest paintings, fruit of four years of work since 2007. Entitled Between fire and ice , this exhibition will give us the latest investigations of pictorial AR Penck, in this constant oscillation which is his between abstraction and figuration, between expressing his own feelings and construction aids.
In 1961, when he created his first painting called Weltbild in response to the construction of the Berlin Wall, Penck trying to get rid of his first creations influenced by impressionism and expressionism. He needed a "reduced capacity" to access the abstract, considered here as a key to achieving the universality of pictorial expression. The Standart , the human figure with refined shapes appeared in 1964, is the perfect illustration of this approach which proceeds from an attempt at systematic classification actions and visual interactions. Meanwhile, in the 60's, the artist, very interested by cybernetics and information theory, is engaged in other experiments with plastic Systembild , "tables-systems" where the figures are in motion, such as "little men-traits that send signals and information ". This approach very didactic paint mixes increasingly over the years to the expressionist vision of the subject, following the vision of the artist's reactions to events and the world around him. Thus, in the 1980s, after passing to the west, its palette is enriched with many colors, contrasting with that, reduced from previous years underground. The chromatic scale used then, bright or dark depends on the vagaries of his discovery of Western societies, between hope and disillusionment ... Today, the exhibition Between fire and ice summarizes the latest thinking from AR Penck on the balance between the visualization of his emotions, so a more expressionist painting and chaotic, and the radical composition of a methodical mind after a cold and neutral. It takes about a particular emphasis in relation to the exhibition on the methods of painting , which took place at the gallery from November 17, 2000 to January 13, 2001, where Penck established a dialogue with Descartes, seeing the foundations of the Discourse on Method is a similarity with his own creative process. The tables already then alternated between figuration and abstraction, in a clear enough distinction between the one and the other, depending on the subject, as was under the representation (the face painter to the philosopher) or theoretical discourse.
Today, the new paintings, one finds this confrontation between extremes, reflecting Penck's vision of our contemporary world. The rigor of a city in winter ( Stadt im Winter , 2007) has thus oppose the warm spirit of the natural elements, the sun and volcanoes, so well illustrated in Elementarkr盲fte, 2009. Most of these new compositions are much more complex, incorporating in them the whole duality of approach Penck, expressionistic representations of emotions and disorderly mingling with a didactic iconography, minimum and radical theories after painting. Thus, in the table which gives its name to the exhibition, " the fire of the term impulsive and cold construction confront "as the artist points out himself. Penck really wants to show us the truth , whether plastic, emotional or historical, is not located in the extreme but it emerges, rather, the clash between two opposites. The artist alludes to the difficulty to coexist abstraction and figuration, the emotional and the rational, plastic IPSAS questions on its analysis of our geo-political reality. Trennung (separation), table set up in 2009, is and a division of both intellectual and political, with a black man in a space located outside the red and white that stands next to a white man trapped in a confined space.
Of the twenty or so works on display, many of them include the representation of a serpent, such Sehnsucht und Hoffnung (Hope and Desire), 2009, or Halluzination , 2009. Penck sees the snake as a pet especially mystical, embodying a very strong desire, and had also made 鈥嬧�媋 painting entitled Snake in the night during the fall of the Berlin Wall to include the aspirations of the East Germans who wanted all the West. In the table Klarheit der Vokal (Clarity of vowels), 2009, the snake comes in reference to Surrealism and its quest for a balance between two seemingly contradictory states, namely the dream and reality, the 'dream and the theoretical Interior ... A red snake that symbolizes the foundation of the desire here is to slip in a tangle of highly structured vowels and consonants on the other hand, symbolizing the foundations of the mind. Penck is a nod to the Rainy Taxi Dali, installation looks goofy, conducted at the International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1938, where a model was installed in a taxi equipped with a shower, after 15 days The lady was covered with snails and became the portrait of Dorian Gray, then a work of art a surreal point of view! The 23 paintings comprising this exhibition are a reflection of the maturity plastic has today ' Today the German artist reached the point of fulfillment he found in a painting is expressionistic gestures but with much more limited than that of the early years, while in the context of his theories pictorial which are no longer confined to its original plastic looking, mostly idiomatic. More than 30 years after its passage to the West, the artist seems to have finally gained some peace of mind!
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