›Class AR Penck - Ambivalence is now taking a new direction‹ 29/10/2021—03/12/2021

• Wolfgang Adam
• Ji-Hyun Bae
• Valery Baratheli
• Carlota Carbonell Valero
• Andrzej Cisowski
• Yongchang Chung
• Juan Collantes
• Joanna Danovska
• Birgit Decressin
• Franz Engler
• Michael Goldstraß
• Andrzej Gora
• Sylwia Graya
• Cosima Hawemann
• Christian Holy
• Gudrun Hermen
• Andrea C. Hoffer
• JB Huh
• Ewa Jaczynska
• Taka Kagitomi
• Gesine Kikol
• Mi-Ryeon Kim
• Dong-Yeon Kim
• Marta Klonowska
• Robert Klümpen
• Bettina Kohrs
• Christian Korda
• Sybille Kroos
• Chidi Kwubiri
• Alexandre Magno
• Benjamin Nachtwey
• Stefan Noss
• Thomas Nowak
• AR Penck
• Wolfgang Pilz
• Christiane Rasch
• Michael Law
• Christine Reifenberger
• Katrin Roeber
• Romans+Romans
• Marina Sailer
• Ekaterina Savtchenko
• Claudia Schauerte
• Nikita Schmitz
• Toshiaki Suenaga
• Catherine Shamugia
• Carrie Stubbs
• Anna Tatarczyk
• Susanne SD Themlitz
• Lubomir Typlt
• Valeriano
• Anna Vilents
• Grzegorz Waliczek
• Yunong Wang
• Xin Zhou

Frankfurt 10/29/2021—12/03/2021

“ I don’t have to go to school. I’m going to be a painter .”

AR Penck, born in 1939 as Ralf Winkler in Dresden, is considered one of the most important German artists from the former GDR. His early interest in drawing and the search for artistic expression established him as a versatile and internationally celebrated representative of modernism. Despite drawing lessons from the well-known artist Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher), he was repeatedly rejected by art schools in East Germany. His imagery, which is demonstrated by stick figures, signs and symbols, is too daring and in later years makes him the father of the "New Wild Ones" in the West.

His career was marked by defamation and exhibition bans by the GDR regime, but the artist did not let this deter him and repeatedly rebelled against the authorities. The founding of the artist group "Lücke" can be seen as a provocation of the state apparatus and paved the way for AR Penck, which led to his expulsion from the GDR and his expulsion to the West in 1980.
He repeatedly operated under various different stage names.
In 1965, he met the gallery owner Michael Werner through Baselitz. His paintings were smuggled to the West unframed and folded up like bed linen in preparation for his first exhibition in Cologne in 1968. In the West, AR Penck was celebrated as a modern, innovative artist, awarded prizes and exhibitions, and finally appointed professor at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf in 1988.
Never dedicated solely to painting, AR Penck also created a broad oeuvre as a sculptor, graphic artist and musician. His almost archaic sign language and wild pictorial subjects underline his striving for a free way of thinking and his self-image as a creator of worlds and interpreter of space. Important themes such as the "balance of power", a certain art of communication and the reduction to simple forms determine his entire work, which cannot be read primarily as political, but cannot escape a culturally critical perspective.
A few years after the death of this important artist, who died in Zurich in 2017, we are now showing a group show of former students of AR Penck in the Lachenmann Art gallery at our Frankfurt location. The artists, who come from different generations, carry on the legacy of their former teacher and give us exciting insights into their very personal, individual working methods, works and visual languages.

We are pleased to present 54 positions from the years of training between 1989 and 2005, some of which also received the title of master student. The AR Penck class describes itself as "the only truly free class."

Installation views: Credits Eric Tschernow