Michael Werner Gallery is pleased to present A.R. Penck: New System Paintings, an exhibition of new works.
A.R. Penck's new System Paintings demonstrate the artist's continued exploration of social structures and systems, extending a complex pictorial language the artist first developed in the 1960s. His earliest mature works employed a range of standardized signs and symbols derived from his deep personal interests in mathematics, cybernetics and behavioral theories. Through the use of a complex language of abstract forms and representational pictographs, painted with dispatch, the artist investigates systems of communication and information. The expressive, often primitive appearance of A.R. Penck's pictorial language masks his paintings' conceptual underpinnings; his deeply symbolic pictorial language examines with intelligence, wit and painterly inventiveness the political and social structures that exist in contemporary society, and their relationship to individual experience.
Born Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1938, A.R. Penck continued to live in East Germany until 1980. He has become one of the most influential artists of his generation, one whose prolific work in sculpture, painting, drawing, writing and music has drawn him international renown. A.R. Penck has numerous museum and gallery exhibitions to his credit and is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe. Last year, a major retrospective of his paintings, sculptures and artist's books was presented by Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Kiel and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. An important group of early Standart paintings and sculptures is included in a major exhibition of post-war German art, Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures. The exhibition, which originated in January at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, traveled to the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg in the spring and opens at the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 3 October to 3 January 2010
A.R. Penck: New System Paintings is on view from 10 September to 24 October 2009. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information please contact Jason Duval at +1 212 988 1623 or jason@michaelwerner.com.