Press release
From June 30 to July 31, 1999, the Michael Werner Gallery in Cologne will show bronze sculptures by A.R. Penck (b.1939 in Dresden) parallel to the museum exhibition "A.R. Penck, Memory - Model - Monument," which, after its stops in Heilbronn and Bremen, will be on view in Recklinghausen, Luxembourg, and Berlin.
In the bronzes created since 1984, Penck works with elementary forms and signs reminiscent of his 'standard' models. However, the bronze sculptures speak with a sensuality that was not inherent in his standart concepts. By casting them in bronze, models made from different source materials, such as wood or cork, are unified. The roughly worked materials often give the sculptures a rough surface and a strong rhythm. A recurring motif is the upright figure, reminiscent of the form of totem or stele, but also to be associated with the human body. In numerous works Penck seeks to engage with art historical models, such as Brancusi, Giacometti, or Arp.
Penck wants to express in his sculptures how he experiences a certain subject, or what rhythm a certain situation has for him. Beyond this expressive approach, he creates numerous biographical, political or social associations through titles and pictorial signs used. He appeals to the viewer's memory and makes new and unusual connections from the images that emerge.
After Penck moved from East to West Germany in 1980, he began working in bronze in 1984. In the sculptures he reflects on his experiences in Western society. Initially, he created miniature models for monuments, with which Penck undermined the social and art-historical role of the public monument. With the bronzes, he alludes to the aesthetic and social significance of reproducibility within a capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, the sculptures retain their fetish character through their precious material and through their archaic formal language, to which one finds access rather intuitively. The expressiveness of the objects gives them a presence with which they define the surrounding space.