Jürgen Partenheimer
The Archive - The Raven Diaries
Contemporary Art Gallery
555 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC
Exhibition Dates: September 12 to November 9, 2014
Opening reception: Thursday, September 11, 7-10pm
Jürgen Partenheimer, studio of the artist, Vancouver, 2014.
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph David Simmonds.
The Contemporary Art Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Canada of work by acclaimed German artist Jürgen Partenheimer. Reflecting the diversity of the artist’s practice, the exhibition comprises works on paper, text, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, much of it produced in Vancouver in spring 2014 during his recent residency as the Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, hosted by Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Partenheimer’s work is essentially abstract; his drawings and paintings, caught seemingly on the verge of dissolution, are remarkable for their fragile beauty, whilst sculpture and ceramic work, suggesting some usefulness, remain elusive with respect to any specific function. Drawing is used as a means to suggest new pictorial space, linking our experience of place through mapping and gesture, through mark-making, asserting continuity between these forms and an experience of daily life.
Jürgen Partenheimer, 'The Raven Diaries #28 (adumbration)', 2014.
Ink, pencil, watercolour on paper.
Courtesy Häusler Contemporary Munich/Zürich.
The conceptual framework for the exhibition is “The archive“ as the artist’s physical and mental “storage“, uniting the remembered and the present, as well as individual and cultural memory. In Vancouver, the exhibition has a subtitle, The Raven Diaries, referencing the symbol and characteristics of the Raven to west coast First Nations culture, while simultaneously drawing analogies to similar figures in cultural myths elsewhere in the world, and especially to the role of the artist as trickster, representative of a catalyst for change in life, for wisdom, creativity and humour.
Alongside the exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery, we have worked in partnership with the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. In their Koerner European Ceramics Gallery, we present two recent works by Partenheimer, these porcelain vessels part of an extensive series of forms made in 2011-12 at the Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenberg, Munich, Germany. Seen here juxtaposed with objects from the same manufacture but of a different time, they provide a counterpoint to the historical collections, connecting us back to a space of the imagination through the perception of the world of things.
Jürgen Partenheimer, Kalliope II, #7; Kalliope III ,#5, #6, 2012.
Handpainted and glazed porcelain vessels.
Private collection Munich; Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufacture, Munich.
The exhibition forms an institutional partnership showing various aspects of Partenheimer’s work between the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Falckenberg Collection, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver.
The accompanying book The Archive contains a series of commissioned essays where philosophers, historians, artist’s, physicists and poets reflect on the multi-faceted nature of Partenheimer’s work. The publication The Archive is available for sale in the CAG bookshop or online at www.contemporaryartgallery.ca for the special exhibition price of $50.
Jürgen Partenheimer, 'Das Archiv The Archive', 2014.
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Gemeentemuseum.
The Hague and Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg. Published by DISTANZ.
The exhibition is generously supported by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Vancouver. With assistance from Niki Design and Glass Studio Inc., North Vancouver.
BIO
Jürgen Partenheimer (1947, born in Munich, Germany) participated in the XI Paris Biennial, XVI Biennial in São Paulo and XLII Venice Biennial, leading to the inclusion in exhibitions among others at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery Washington; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Singapore Art Museum; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Fondacion Miró, Barcelona; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid; Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the National Gallery of Art in Berlin.
In 2000 Partenheimer was the first contemporary German artist to whom the China National Gallery of Art in Beijing and the Nanjing Museum in Nanjing dedicated a comprehensive retrospective of his work. Important one person exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; S.M.A.K. Ghent; IVAM, Valencia; CGAC -Centro Galego de Arte Contemporànea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Nationalgalerie Berlin; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Staedelsches Kunstinstitut Frankfurt; Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
Jürgen Partenheimer, Studio of the artist, Vancouver. 'The Raven Diaries #13 and #15 (setting down the den)', 2014.
Ink, pencil, watercolor on paper.
Courtesy Häusler Contemporary Munich/Zürich.
Photograph by David Simmonds.
About the Contemporary Art Gallery
Established in 1971 the Contemporary Art Gallery is the longest standing free public art gallery in Vancouver dedicated exclusively to presenting contemporary art. By the early 1990s the programme expanded providing some of the first institutional exhibitions for many important Vancouver artists, including Brian Jungen, Germaine Koh and Steven Shearer. The Contemporary Art Gallery is a publicly funded institution, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Vancouver and the Province of BC through the BC Arts Council and the BC Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch. We are very grateful for this support and that we receive from the Vancouver Foundation and our members, donors and volunteers.
Contemporary Art Gallery
555 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC
Tel: 001 604 681 2700
www.contemporaryartgallery.ca
www.re-title.com/exhibitions/contemporaryartgalleryvancouver.asp
