Press release
From October 2 to October 30, 1999, the Michael Werner Gallery is showing new paintings by A.R. Penck (Dresden, 1939). The paintings are characterized by Penck's vital and direct way of painting and a pictogram-like language of forms, which go back to his standard works. Penck uses this immediate language of signs to put complex situations in an inescapable reality into the picture.
In contrast to Penck's large-scale compositions, which are reminiscent of multi-figured history paintings, the works on display are more an analysis of individual experiences. In the series "In the Temple of the Unknown," for example, a single stick figure is juxtaposed with a mysterious X and a labyrinth of other signs. The paintings are two-toned: white chalk ciphers on a black background, or crude black characters on a seductively luminous colored background. Penck's own description of what he calls the Temple of the Unknown reveals his desire to rediscover the world from scratch: "Everything you know or think you know turns into the unknown - including yourself. You lose the ground under your feet, so to speak. Something happens that can be called total alienation - a terrible feeling, but also a liberation." Penck attempts to represent and analyze the state of complete loss of orientation and the resulting new beginning with his reduced formal language.
In another group of paintings Penck deals with 'lava' and the eruptive force that creates it. The pictures are characterized by the violence with which each new explosion breaks up old encrustations. The glowing stream of lava, however, quickly cools and solidifies again. A red figure is enclosed by a dense black line. In other paintings in the series, signs and symbols such as the pentagon, the eye, the eagle, which recur frequently in Penck's vocabulary of forms, swirl about. The scorpion, as a symbol of rebirth through death, is given a special place in these paintings.
Also, in a series of paintings that Penck groups together under the title 'Kraftfeld Auseinandersetzung,' the depicted combat situations and conflicts between the appearing human figures, the eagle, and other signs seem to result in bursts of energy and force fields. These violent upheavals, which allow no distance from things, appear in Penck's pictorial world as the only means against the inevitable, leveling progression of time.
