A.R. Penck not only paints, but also makes sculpture, books and music. He concerns himself with cybernetics and the Ice Age. (The name “A.R. Penck” is derived from that of a nineteenth-century geologist who specialized in the Ice Age; the artist’s real name is Ralf Winkler.) His exhibitions are often accompanied by his own publications: texts which read like Tom Wolfe’s “new journalism.” His various interests could all be grouped under the heading of “communication.” Until August 1980, Penck lived and worked exclusively in East Germany while his art was exhibited in the West, especially in West Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Penck was never able to visit these exhibitions, and in his own country was unable to show his work in public. He was not admitted to the official artists’ union, and as a result he remained in complete artistic isolation.
Over the years, Penck has developed his own language of images, in which he refers to African culture and to the earliest cave drawings. There, and in Penck’s work, people are reduced to generalized figures. When portraits do occur in the artist’s work, which happens rarely, they can be recognized only by a small group of insiders.
Penck’s figures are surrounded by a number of variables: letters, signs, parts of buildings or very abstract objects. He composes images of impotence and powerlessness that often make the spectator feel depressed. His people seem unable to communicate to each other or attain specific goals. Obstructions and misunderstandings stand in their way. All the parts to the puzzle are there, but they do not fit, no matter what structure or system supports them. Penck has been classified as a neo-Expressionist, or a “spontaneous” painter. However this is incorrect: his signs, or his “structures,” as he calls them, fit into a well-thought-out system.
Penck’s paintings do not refer only to themselves. He questions the value his signs have in a larger context, and treats painting from an analytic point of view. When he places the emotionally-laden image of a small fleeing man in a formal composition, a discrepancy arises. Penck doggedly investigates the schism between image and reality; his extremely elementary forms only intensify this rupture.
Since last August Penck has been living in the West. In an exhibition called “The metamorphosis of a citizen of East Germany into a citizen of West Germany.” the theme of flight appears in many forms. In other works a Penck type person—rigid with fear—stands between symbols of East and West, and there is also a cheerful rollerskater—a sport which is very popular in Cologne. (Penck, who referred to himself in the past sometimes as Ypsilon, has changed into Alpha Ypsilon: a new beginning based on the past.)
The paintings and watercolors demonstrate his transition from East to West, and are also carefully formulated commentaries on the art of painting. Penck is trying to achieve a delicate balance between highly individual emotions and common-denominator images. Oscar Wilde wrote in 1889, in The Decay of Lying that art is “a veil rather than a mirror.” Penck tries to unveil art without turning it into a mirror.
—Mickey Piller
Translated from the Dutch by Frederieke S. Taylor.
