Indepth Arts News:
"Panamarenko: Orbit - First Major Exhibition in the United States of Belgian Artist"
2000-11-30 until 2001-06-17
Dia Center for the Arts
New York, NY,
USA
Panamarenko's experimental flying machines modeled on the
motion of birds, insects, and human craft have been greeted
with wonder and acclaim since the 1960s. In his exploration of
the potentially fertile relationships linking technology and
nature, Panamarenko considers issues of imagination as well as
function. Dia Center for the Arts will introduce Panamarenko's
work to audiences this fall in his first major exhibition in
the United States.
This exhibition will pair the Belgian artist's key work,
Aeromodeller, built from 1969-71, with a new piece created
this year. Mixing the scientific with the artistic, the
monumental Aeromodeller solidified Panamarenko's thinking and
established his significant reputation. Powered by four
engines, this large-scale hybrid of a cocoon and a blimp is
composed of a transparent inflatable sac and a gondola for
passengers. Dia's installation also includes Raven's Variable
Matrix (2000), which looks to the aerodynamics of insects for
the basis of its engineering.
While creating readymades, collages, and performances in the
mid-1960s, Panamarenko worked alongside other object-oriented
conceptual artists Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, also
associated with the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp. Such
momentous events of the 1960s as the first manned space flight
by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin in 1962, the joint
French-British development of the Concorde starting in 1962 and
culminating in the first flight in 1969, and American Neil
Armstrong's first step on the moon in 1969, cast Panamarenko's
intense life-long study of the natural sciences in a new light.
Since the mid-1960s, he has invented flying machines that
combine primitive forms with technologically sophisticated
materials in his search to resolve practical mechanical
problems as well as to probe metaphysical dilemmas. In addition
to building and testing speculative models, Panamarenko has
developed singular theories on the nature of closed systems,
electromagnetism, and the relationship between inertia and
mass.
Panamarenko was born in Antwerp where he attended the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1960. His work has been shown
widely in Europe and Japan including solo exhibitions at
Kunstverein Hanover (1991); The National Museum of Art, Osaka
(1992); Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris
(1998); and also at the Third Biennial of Sydney (1979), the
Sao Paulo Biennale (1983), and the opening last year of SMAK in
Ghent, Belgium.
IMAGE:
Umbilly I, 1976
Stahl, Balsaholz, Blech, Kunststoff, Japanpapier, zwei blaue Kissen
drei Kinderwagenräder mit Gummireifen, Pedalen, Kette und Schwungrad
Flügel: Glasfaser, Epoxid und Nylon
Technische Universität, Eindhoven
Courtesy Anny de Decker, © Panamarenko
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