A. R. Penck „How it works“, 1989, acrylic on Leinwand, 340 x 340 cm. © A. R. Penck, courtesy Galerie Michael Werner Berlin, Cologne & New York

BERLIN.- Julius Werner Berlin presents A.R. Penck “The Eighties”, on view through March 27, 2008. Penck comes from a clime which has elapsed. He lives in a present which will not start before the next corner. Certainly he is an European artist. Defenetely he is not anymore a denizen of Dresden.

Derry, Dublin, Edinburgh: a triangle in which interlocution and encounter go round in circles and turn into a casus belli. Two capitals where everything is calm: Dublin. Edinburgh. One area of civil war: Derry. The Scots against the irish. Since a long time now the subject is not a certain colloquy but it is about ever recurring senseless situations. Penck moves towards this conflict in 1887 when he moved to Ireland. These paintings show clearly that he opened his eyes widely to this not only comfortable panorama.

All of Pencks` paintings aswell as his sculptures display the power of soliloquy and selfencounter and their govering through totems and taboos out of a human, historical geology.

The paintings remaining from our present maybe only such which would have been understood a twenty thousand years ago? Pencks paintings - not only the ones from the Eighties - are a plea of painting in a culture of oblivion. (courtesy www.artdaily.org)