Elisabeth Penker / Ferdinand Penker curated by Michael Scott Hall

Ferdinand Penker’s tempera on canvas paintings (in the exhibition) utilize linear compositions and appear from a distance printed or collaged, until closer inspection reveals a more handmade quality.
He is presented here by his ‘leaners’ which are architecture-specific paintings in that they can be arranged in response to given architectural context by either leaning against the wall or another painting or wedged between the ceiling and floor. Each new architectural context creates a slightly different compositional oppourtunity. Since his earliest installations in the 70 - 80s, Ferdinand Penker has long had a strong interest in the relation between the architectural space of where and how the painting hangs and the flatness of the micro-thin space inside his paintings. Penker lived and worked in San Francisco in the 1970-80s, perhaps picked-up some tendencies which are more common in Northern California (than to Austria) concerning ideas of space and light.

Simultaneously, the Sculptor Elisabeth Penker will present an ongoing series of portraits (photo-collages) entitled “Split Representation” utilizing the formal structure discussed by Claude Levi-Strauss in his essay “Split Representation in the Art of Asia and the America” in which he compares different cultures and different periods in history from Shang (China), Haida (Native Americans), Caduveo (Brazil) and Maori (New Zealand) who all use similar stylistic elements to represent (for example) the face (or portrait) which is not seen from the front but as two profiles merged together to form one. Elisabeth Penker appropriates the portraits of philosophers / anthropologist /cultural scholars & artists and re-represents them in a Split style, developing a new hybrid-form of representation which merges both Western and Non-Western concepts of representation. Along with the photo-collages, Elisabeth Penker will present “De-Grammatical”, a 5-channel sound installation. The composition is structurally-based on the grammatical classifications of languages, deconstructed into minimal phonetic units played within a non-linear 5-channel matrix.