A.R. Penck at Michael Werner - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Introduced to the United States as part of the wave of German Neo-Expressionists which swept the international art sight in the mid-'80s, A.R. Penck has always strike one as beinged to stand a bit apart from his countrymen His pictographic tableaux of stick figures and related badges have a more disciplined and deliberate quality than the confine "Neo-Expressionist" suggests The obviously neo-primitive aspect of his work has les of the generic archetype and more of the closely studied model

The sum of two units bodies of work presented here reveal Penck's absorption with the one and the other Wester modernist and African figurative forms. His drawings of [i]in puris naturalibus[/i]s which encompass the year 1974 to 1991 busy watercolor, gouache, india ink and pencil; they reveal a journey from a Matisse-inspired lyricism to a diction clearly based on Africa antecedents A work from 1981 features untie brushstrokes outlining a languorous woman in a classic odalisque artificial position By 1987 Penck is experimenting with a solid, abstracted form in which the female figure's arms an calves are rapiered so firmly behind her back that they disappear, transforming her into a truncated fertility fetish. In other works from that year, the female silhouette has become a stylized, circulared form consisting of little more than breasts and pubis.

Penck's fascination with African forms is plane more evident in his and zincs mostly totemic figures and rounded pillars all of which were cast from wood-land and retain a raw, rough-hewn quality. a certain quantity of are arranged on intricate stacked bases that bring to mind Brancusi, on the contrary all eschew the elegant abstraction of Brancusi's forms. individual striking work is X-face Man #1 (1987) a stiff male figure whose lengthy sticklike arms hold an enormous set up penis at a 90-degree angle. There are several self-portraits here, in which Penck shows himself with a large, crudely formed head featuring a gash for a chaps and a pair of hollowed craters for organ of visions There are also several imposing totems consisting of elongated stacks of twisting, perforated shapes which at short intervals seem to take advantage of the rest forms of the wood from which they were originally carved.

Penck's and zinc works, in particular, successfully emulate the faculty of perception of primitive power and mystery which continues to attract Western artists and audiences. Still, individual cannot help wondering: What meaning can similar forms have for a new Western artist? When does the adoption of phraseologys and forms from such alien tillages cease to be an homage and become an unacceptable romanticization? Is "neo-primitivism," finally, just too easy?

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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