Manfred Pernice
17 May - 30 June 2012
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MANFRED PERNICE
pezzi
17 May – 30 June 2012
May 8, 2012—German sculptor Manfred Pernice connects aspects of
architecture, urban planning, and everyday esthetics with questions of
time, place and politics to create an oeuvre that is held together by a
complex web of formal and thematic threads. Appropriately described as a
"liquid narrative,” the building blocks of Pernice’s language feel
immediately familiar.
His sculptures present themselves as existing within an everyday context
recognizable to the viewer as, say, containers, displays, tables,
platforms, stages or entire living rooms. Sculptural elements are cut
from plywood and similar composite materials, painted or raw, allowing
insight into their own physical construction, and in combination with
found objects, such as books, photographs, brochures and particularly
ceramics, constitute Pernice’s distinctly recognizable language.
In his fifth solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, Pernice presents ten
related sculptures. They are built as freestanding tables or wall-boxes;
curtains and colored Plexi glass reveal a variety of objects culled
from the artist’s place of work in Berlin and from recently visited
Cuba. Some of the archival materials relate to German painters August
Macke and Konrad Klapheck, or to Treptower Park, an area of Berlin that
features a Soviet war memorial built to the design of the Soviet
architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate the 50,000 Red Army soldiers
who fell in the Battle in Berlin in April–May 1945. It served as the
central war memorial of East Germany. Pernice recomposes materials of
various origins for a new aesthetic value and returns them into the
context of art. Anyone working with sculpture today, according to
Pernice, also faces "questions of the day before yesterday." Today’s
expanded concept of sculpture with its simultaneously available
materials, forms and histories always leads back to classic questions of
sculpture:
How is something built or formed, and which decisions were made?
Solo exhibitions of Pernice's work have been organized by SMAK Stedelijk
Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin
(both 2011); Wiener Secession, Vienna; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford;
Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (all 2010); Neues Museum in Nuremberg;
Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (both 2008); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2007);
Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY (2004) Pinakothek der
Moderne in Munich (2003), Sprengel Museum Hanover (2001), Portikus in
Frankfurt; Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (both 2000), and Musee d'art
moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998). His work has also been included in
major exhibitions such as 29° Bienal de São Paulo - Bienal de Sao Paulo,
São Paulo (2010); Carnegie International (2008); Skulptur-Projekte
Münster (2007); Seville Biennale (2006); Venice Biennale (2001 and
2003); Documenta 11 (2001); Manifesta 3 (2000); Berlin Biennale (1998);
and Lyon Biennale (1997).
www.antonkerngallery.com
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