PETER PANYOCZKI SURFACE AND BENEATH
SURFACE AND BENEATH
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PETER PANYOCZKI 1 – 25 NOV 2018 OPENING RECEPTION 7pm - 10pm
43 Jalan Merah Saga #01-72 Workloft at Chip Bee Singapore 278115 T + 65 6476 4788 F + 65 6476 4787 sing@ taksu.com Gallery Hours Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 7pm Sunday 12pm - 6pm
SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
PETER PANYOCZKI Born 1953 in Budapest Hungary, Peter Panyoczki escaped with his parents to Switzerland in 1957 following the Hungarian Revolution of ‘56. Panyoczki lived and studied in Switzerland for the next two decades, graduating with a Master of Arts from the University of Zürich in 1980. He was involved in many projects during the 1980s notably film production, was teaching German Literature at Purdue University and in Zürich. He had artist residencies in the US and Europe. Peter made his first visit to New Zealand in 1992, and then decided to immigrate and become a New Zealand resident in 1995. Peter now has dual New Zealand-Swiss citizenship, living in Kaiwaka , New Zealand. His exhibition history is extensive with representation in many solo/group exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Peter Panyoczki may be regarded as a mixed media artist, working in a hybrid of forms and mediums: painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and digital technology.
SURFACE AND BENEATH
SURFACE AND BENEATH — that is the title of this monograph. “I have not offered a German translation, but it could more or less read: Unter der oberfläche. My last monograph, distance and Proximity, now lies 13 years in the past. The present book brings together a selection of works from this period of artistic activity. It is intended to show the path i have taken, along with its various by-ways, on the search for ever new possibilities of shaping my work. It is intended to give the reader an overview and help me to clear my next way. A new path arises mostly from the synthesis of what is already in existence and proceeds dialectically to the next one. That is why the looking back at the comparison of surfaces of already existing works are always important processes. The independent appraisal of an observer, who, by analyzing from another angle, throws light on my work and also looks beneath the surface, adds an additional favour. It brings out aspects which are not always obvious to the artist him/herself.
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When one has examined so closely, one becomes acquainted with oneself in new and different ways. I asked myself whether i should express myself verbally here at all. Pictures must speak for themselves; artists need not also give their own commentary on them, nonetheless i have risked not so much commenting directly on my works but rather, somewhat like assembling a collage, opening the door to the kitchen of my thoughts which accompanied them. Always in the hope that through this, my works and possibly also the conditions out of which they arose, can be better understood.”
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
Particles- Monades Mixed Media on Signbond 120 x 120cm / 2017
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
From The Series: Particles, Book 5 Mixed Media on Aluminium 60 x 60cm / 2018
Within our DNA we carry the journeys of our ancestors. We are each the sum of their triumphs and of their traumas, and are the repositories of all they have endured and overcome. Artists are notoriously restless, absorbing stimuli from the environment that gives them sustenance, as acute observers of their place and human nature. These observations they transmit to their chosen media. Peter’s paintings and sculptures are a record of his intellectual and physical wanderings around our planet, connecting his native Europe to our island home in the South Pacific. He is both exile and supreme connector, an innovator, yet also the inheritor of memories. His Magyar ancestors journeyed from Siberia to present day Hungary, carrying with them a distinctive language and culture. Their migrations inspired awe and fear in the Western European mind in the guise of Atilla the Hunn. The name ‘Panyoczki’ reflects migrations of Slavs to the heart of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. Peter, however, also carries the trauma of his own exile with his parents from his native SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
Hungary to the sanctuary of Switzerland, when in 1956 Russian tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Uprising. Perhaps the ultimate ‘self exile’ (in the European mind) came when Peter chose to abandon the ivied dwellings of Europe altogether in 1992, when he followed his love Tatjana to a small island at the end of the world. He had met her by chance at Café Odeon in Zurich, once the meeting place of such Dada artists as Jean Arp and Tristan Tzara, the birth place of absurd ideas.
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
From The Series : Origins, Flow Mixed Media on Aluminium 60 x 60cm / 2018
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
Peter as wanderer, exile and connector, is also the conduit of two worlds. His ability to connect the cultures and philosophies he has observed as a result of his wanderlust is the overwhelming force in his sculptures and paintings. Peter has since lived a big part of his life in Kaiwaka, Northland, which seems such an unlikely place for this consummate European, speaker of seven languages, a man immersed in European customs. However, there are precedents.
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The Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser also lived a dual existence, travelling between the sophistication of Vienna and the windswept isolation of his new world home; an imaginary abandonment of society’s bonds sought by the intelligentsia of Europe since the time of Peter’s fellow Swiss patriot Rousseau. Hundertwasser also travelled between the old world cultures of Europe and the north, so-called a “landscape with too few lovers” by Colin McCahon, to find solace. Just as Hundertwasser became intrigued by Maori culture, Peter has made references in his painting to the Maori creation narrative (Maori Creation Mythology, no. 3–7, p. 9), finding parallels with contemporary scientific theories on how the universe was created.
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Particles - Sediments Mixed Media on Signbond 120 x 120 cm / 2018
THE FREEING OF THE VISIBLE
Heaven LED on Wood 120 x 120 cm / 2018 S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
Eye Sea Mixed Media on Signboard 120 x 120 cm / 2018
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From The Series : Water InkJet on Aluminium on Lightbox 120 x 120 cm / 2018
The visible world furnishes us most of the time with familiar images, which we arrange and supply with meaning. It links itself to our knowledge and experience, and we designate it with words and language. We bind it to a reality as it appears to us. Images give us information—a useful set of instruments for ordering the immediate and obvious and for orienting ourselves in the space closest to us, but fundamentally useless for distilling the immaterial and with it what is really binding along the paths of knowledge. And yet, the artist is able to give physical form to the invisible, just as lifeless leaers of the alphabet make living thoughts when joined together.
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S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
Peter Panyoczki’s work turns in this thought space, grounded in the big questions about perception, recognition, and knowledge. From this deep and undefined reservoir of meditative existence —the immediate world, however it may appear, has been removed. By way of contrast stands the artistic praxis and with it the structuring of the immediate, of human activity altogether, of the thing in itself—the ordering of materials. While dealing with the material and transforming it the instinctive comes into the picture; this artist’s baggage carries with it a whole store of knowledge and experience, and it is this kinetic process that sets things into relationship with each other and allows new thoughts or meanings to emerge.
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The unburdened access to materials is also a characteristic of Peter Panyoczki’s work, where unmodified objects from nature as well as new digital techniques are utilized. For the present investigation it is therefore interesting to see which materials the artist works with so that the unseizable aspects of his thought space can be deciphered within its form.
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
A ‘surface’ is not simply a geometric composition of lines. It is a certain distribution of the sensible.’
The textures of the surface membranes of Panyoczki’s abstractions have grown thick with text, first as numbers, then as Braille. So, as we become exegetes of his samples, increasingly the paintings have become linguistically sandwiched between the source texts and the burgeoning growth of essays like this one. Is the artist at odds with Caeiro’s keeper of flocks, or are words changing their function in respect to his works? And, do the lightbox works signal a change in the distribution of the sensible? The title Jasmine Connects is shared by three of these lightboxes from 2011. The date suggests they reference the Sidi Bouzid Revolt in Tunisia which began in January of that year. Western media called it ‘The Jasmine Revolution’—jasmine being Tunisia’s national flower. The toppling of the repressive Zine El Abidone Ben Ali, President since 1987, sparked the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, and inspired the prodemocracy protests in China shortly ater. Protesters made the connection and the authorities followed suit : internet SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
censors tagged the word ‘jasmine’ and Beijing police banned its sale at flower markets. Our expectation is that title and text connect, but do they? Panyoczki exhibited a version of this work in Hong Kong which sampled Confucius —‘The Doctrine of the Mean’—instead of Pessoa, as though to remind the Communist authorities whose power was being tested that if ‘a happy order‘ is to prevail, they would do well to heed the advice offered over two and a half thousand years ago by their own Chinese sage. Perhaps ‘Jasmine’ makes different connections or connects differently in each of the three versions of the work. Maybe, as Pessoa’s ‘standin’ advises us, we are just thinking too much.
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
From The Series: Particles, Books Mixed Media 120 x 120 cm / 2018
Only a stone Let us imagine Panyoczki picking up a stone and carrying it back to his studio. It is only a stone, nothing but a stone, one stone out of the countless multitude of stones, formed by nature, not intended for any use, inorganic maaer—a random find. If Panyoczki regards this stone more closely and sees it as potentially useful, then a change of perspective occurs, and stone shits into another category of appearance. Behind this image of the stone, innumerable other images are hidden and may become perceptible. If we describe the image with familiar analogies, then we think of hardness, duration, or even power.In this way, we address dimensions of space, of time, and of the universe. In this one specimen there come together the nameless, inconceivable and unimaginable number of stones as the idea of infinity.
SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
Observed nearness turns into a presentiment of infinity. Thus, stone, the work material, becomes a motif that makes itself into a central theme— that which Panyoczki calls an “interface between mimesis and abstraction.” From this point of view, it can no longer be determined in Panyoczki’s work whether the categories “abstract” or “figurative” are of any value for conveying an impression of an image or indeed whether they still have a meaning at all.
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Gwyneth’s Hands Mixed Media on Signbond on light box 120 x 120 x 8 cm / 2018
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The material This metaphorical view of things, which leads from the individual to the world in its entirety and to existence altogether, is also to be found in Panyoczki’s work process. The real trail of the fabrication of the works, their construction and the concentrated care of them appears in a meditative rhythm of ordering and forming which is comparable to a ritual act. Here a cosmos en miniature comes into being—as the concentration of personal existence through acting and creating. At this point the thought or the idea materializes. But this process is even more complex than it at first appears, and it requires further consideration. In working with the material, an inner dynamic between artists and their working materials develops. The more they follow or let themselves be guided by the material’s own characteristics, the more they become alchemists.
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Alchemists, however, are not interested in what a material is, but in what it brings about. Through this, to a certain degree, artists surrender their own activity to the materiality of the object. What lies behind the work might get lost to them for a brief moment, but in fact they tread a path comparable to that of the elementary particle physicist when he/she investigates the qualities of the smallest building blocks of matter and thereby, in the final analysis, addresses “questions about the basic structures of the world.” The photographer Berenice Abbott, who embarked on a search for the laws of nature, has expressed this as follows:“When searching for art, the subject gets lost; when searching for the subject, one discovers art.”
language and writing The non-artistic knowledge with which Panyoczki is concerned includes not only astrophysics but also the “usage” of language and text, explainable above all by the fact that he originally studied Linguistics. Writing and text and the entanglement with the image thus fill an important place in his creative work. What has priority—the word or the image? A symbol for this can already be found in the Bible: the conflict between Moses and Aaron about the principle authorized to represent divine authority—the tables of the law and therewith the written word, as brought by Moses from God, or the image in the form of the Golden Calf which Aaron had erected. Whereas the Jewish religion has given a definitive answer in the form of the prohibition of images, we find another approach in more contemporary interpretations. Thus in Arnold Schönberg’s opera, ‘Moses and Aaron’, Moses sings the last despairing (and doubting) words “O word, you word, that I lack.”
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S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
from the series: “LEMON 3” inkject and acrylis rods on aluminium on light box 150 x 150 cm / 2011
With Panyoczki language appearing as Braille, in the form of elevations from the image ground, the dots render the image rhythmically. They speak to the eye as well as to the sense of touch. But neither with the eye nor with the tactile sense can the observer determine the statement and the meaning of the texts which are important to Panyoczki, a dilemma which is familiar and which Siri Hustvedt has described so laconically and precisely: “To look and not see an old problem. It usually means a lack of understanding; an inability to decipher the meaning of something in the world around us.”
SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
One can very well interpret this combination of image, writing, and ( incomprehensible ) text in Panyoczki’s work as a metaphor for the inability to see; it is intimated, however, that the subject of these works is precisely that which is hidden and that which confers meaning and will lead to it. That is what the texts worked out by Panyoczki himself, and which are correspondingly important to him, say to us; they encompass a wide span of philosophers, writers, and poets.
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“APPEL” inkjet print and acrylic rods on aluminium on lightbox 150 x 150 cm / 2010
light The works with light, fit into a concept analogous to that of the Braille images. Like the latter they follow a text in their markups, with the difference that here the membrane of the image carrier shows small holes and small acrylic pins follow these Braille positions, fed from the light of neon tubes attached behind them. Light as the essence of immaterial matter, liberates more than any other medium in the context of space. Although Minimal artists like James Turrell, Maria Nordmann or Robert Irwin have formulated this new concept of space impressively in their works with light, their discourse referred primarily to perception.
SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
New Zealand Sheep Running Straight Into Manhattan Mixed Media 150 x 150 cm / 2010
Platonic Spheres - Water 2 White oxide, black oxide and gold leaf on Signboard 2018
S U RFA C E AND BE NE AT H / P E T E R PA NY OCZ K I / 2 0 1 8 / TA K S U S I NGA P ORE
Platonic Spheres - Water 3 Ink Jet, white oxide and gold leaf on Signbond 210 x 200 cm / 2018
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Platonic Spheres - Mineral Ink jet and white oxide on Signbond 157 x 150 cm / 2018
To conclude, a thought excursion: Imagine that science succeeds in sending us to unknown and far distant galaxies. We have the possibility to observe interstellar events through a porthole, to encounter never-seen planets and stars. We will be underway for years, decades, or still longer. Alone. The memories of Earth and human life will gradually fade. Fascinated, we will gaze on a spectacle far beyond the ken of human beings. Then, suddenly, imagine that a quite everyday wooden chair comes into our line of view, soundlessly floating near the porthole... Now try to picture the emotional life of such an observer. Does this so-called banal object not bring an enormous potential with it? Will the observer, faced with this chair, not break out in emotions? The chair may suddenly become the nostalgic embodiment of the already almost wholly forgotten human race and stir up all the recollections that the observer has probably forgotten.
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An everyday object appears in its uniqueness and acts as a pars pro toto, here for humanity and its culture. The galactic distance of this observer from the Earth will create another viewpoint, a perspective from which the usual scale of values will shift.
Art, too, insofar as it presents itself as art, suggests such a viewpoint. Naturally it demands of the observer more than simple cooperation—no merely passive taking up something just to con- sume it. Art compels the observer to meditate actively. It suggests to the observer a consideration of the world with its ever so small objects, of human utterances, lifting the so-called banal in importance in this way, but also to regard life in and of itself as a unique miracle. Thus everything can be the object of a cathartic contemplation. Art cuts things out of their context, drafts a new language of per- ception, and thereby abducts the observer toward itself.
So much, so much, and everything wants to exist. Mysterious, the place things find for themselves: So many penetrations, and everything preserves its consistency.
*Excerpted from the book SURFACE AND BEYOND, a monologue by Peter Panyoczki. SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
43 Jalan Merah Saga #01-72 Workloft at Chip Bee Singapore 278115 T + 65 6476 4788 F + 65 6476 4787 sing@taksu.com
PETER PANYOCZKI SURFACE AND BENEATH
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Gallery Hours Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 7pm Sunday 12pm - 6pm TAKSU is a leading contemporary art gallery and specialist in Southeast Asia. Representing selections of fine art with distinctive urban edge, we are at the forefront of contemporary art in this region. TAKSU works to forge a platform for established and emerging artists to share their pool of creativity and knowledge through its residency programs and exhibitions. Encapsulating the true meaning of the word TAKSU; divine inspiration, energy, and spirit. Suherwan Abu Director, TAKSU Galleries Graphic Design Jeffrey Lim / Studio 25 Artworks & Images Š 2018 Peter Panyoczki This publication may be reproduced in any form for academic, editorial and/or non-commercial purposes without special permission from the artist(s) and gallery, with acknowledgement of the source. For other purposes, prior consent is needed.
SURFA C E A N D B E N E ATH / P E T E R PAN YO C Z K I / 20 1 8 / TAK S U S I NGA P ORE
Curriculum Vitae 1953 born on October the 30th, in Budapest, Hungary 1957 escapes after the Revolution of 56 with his parents to Switzerland 1969-74 education and completion of the Matura in the Kollegium Gymnasium Schwyz 1974-80 visits the University of Zürich (German language and literature, art history) LIC.PHIL I, (Master of Arts) 1980) 1979-81 assistant for German Language at the Purdue University in Lafayette IN, US. During this period he writes and directs the film First Love, based on Samuel Beckett’s novella 1982-86 various studies and studio-stays in Rotterdam, Florence, Vienna teaching/lecturing language and art in Zürich 1990 studio stay in Barcelona Project: Hannibal - a meditative travel research on Vanitas through Northern Africa 1991 creates during his travels the poetic video: HANNIBAL 1992 visits New Zealand for the first time 1993 art residence in Budapest, realizes the 1st part of the Babylon-Project (an interactive artistic dialogue) with Janos Kalmar (H) and Joerg Spamer (D1994) at the Goethe Institute in Budapest 1994 makes a video in Zurich for the Jazz Performance Kleinzeit with No Secrets in the Family, Christoph Baumann, Urs Bloechlinger a.o. 1995 moves to New Zealand and becomes a resident birth of son Janos
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1995-98 lives in Auckland and Switzerland, realizes commissions for public buildings in Europe; becomes a New Zealand citizen 1999 begins to realize a synergetic project in New Zealand: THE KAIPARA FOUNDATION, i.e. to create in New Zealand a platform, where artists, scientists, musicians etc. from NZ and overseas have a possibility to meet and to stay in residence to work and communicate their ideas (at seminars, symposia etc.) This work is in progress works as an artist in Kaiwaka, New Zealand and exhibits internationally Monographs: “Panyoczki - Monographie” , mit Texten von Volker Schunck, Beatrice Rolli Zinsstag, Georg Kohler, Alois M. Haas und Charles E. Brooks, Benteli Verlag, Wabern -Bern, 1996 ISBN 3-7165-0979-5 “Distance and Proximity - a monograph on Peter Panyoczki” with texts by Georg Kohler, Wystan Curnow, Peter Panyoczki, imp.press Auckland, 2004 “Surface and Beneath” monograph (contributions by Wystan Curnow, Brett Graham. Herbert Lachmeyer, Beat Wyss, Peter Panyoczki) published by BENTELI (Switzerland / Germany) 2016