Jürgen PartenheimerGespräche mit Alexander Kluge, Jan Thorn-Prikker und andere Texte

Jürgen Partenheimer (b. 1947 in Munich) has become known for a lyrical intensity that combines with the constructive elements of Minimal Art. More than twenty years ago “Die Zeit” already saw in him the literarily inclined traveller and called him a “poet of fine nuances, of delicate lines and tones.” He has taken part in the biennials of Paris, Venice and São Paulo and has filled the great museums worldwide with solo exhibitions. With his solitary yet elegant porcelain vases he once again turned the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin into a special place; in 2014 he was then invited, with individual groups of works on thematic aspects, to the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, the Deichtorhallen/Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg-Harburg, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. White Cube in London is now devoting a large retrospective show to him, staged among other places in the gallery’s spectacular 9 x 9 x 9 metre cube, with works from the past two years combined with others from the 1980s and 1990s. Alongside painting and drawing, a version of the painted bronze sculpture “Axis Mundi” is also on show, consisting of stacked box elements of differing size finished in various shades of blue. The fragility of the works, which derives from the line, stands explicitly for their sign-like character, but also for the artistic approach of surveying and mapping, with critical awareness, the constantly redefined free space of art and its practice. This volume is made particularly valuable by the reprinting of many historically important but no longer available texts, for instance by Jan Hoet and Rudi Fuchs, or conversations with Jan Thorn-Prikker and Alexander Kluge. This book celebrates Jürgen Partenheimer as a major artist of our time, one who has always remained true to his aim of being a representative of a subjective abstraction.

Exhibition:
White Cube London, 27/4 – 25/6/2017