R. Penck’s Class / Is There a Measure of Complexity?

R. Penck’s Class / Is There a Measure of Complexity? / 23.05.2025 - 21.06.2025

From 23 May, the public is invited to discover the formally diverse and multifaceted works of a group of artists connected by their shared mentor, A. R. Penck (1939–2017) – a leading figure in German Neo-Expressionism and their former professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The exhibition features works by 34 artists from across the globe, encompassing painting, printmaking, drawing, collage, textiles, glass, objects and installations.

“R. Penck’s Class / Is There a Measure of Complexity?” is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions that have been held around the world since 2019, bringing together Penck’s students. Each of these events seeks to unite the artists in a shared tribute to their teacher, while also highlighting the enduring relevance of his formative ideas.

One of Penck’s core concepts – expressed most clearly in his Systembilder (system paintings) – was the democratisation of art: the belief that art can serve as a space where anyone can construct their own subjective systems and explore limitless visual possibilities. He developed this approach in practice during his teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1988 and 2003, encouraging his students to cultivate a fully autonomous artistic voice.

This emphasis on subjective artistic expression is strongly reflected in the works presented at the City Gallery in Wrocław. While the featured artists explore a wide range of narratives and make use of various media, technologies and formal strategies, certain thematic and aesthetic resonances run throughout their work. Investigating these shared elements is one of the central aims of the Wrocław exhibition. As curator Katarzyna Zahorska writes in the exhibition catalogue: The extraordinary diversity of artistic attitudes that characterizes artists who integrate into an informal group as Penck’s class definitely strengthens the tone and intensifies the meaning of the question posed by A. R. Penck about the measure of complexity. It also speaks in favour of the validity of the approach close to the German neo-expressionists, suggesting to look at art as a fully democratic space, open to individualised concepts, visions, solutions – systems created by the power of creative autonomy. This perspective, which results from the artistic activities of Penck’s students, was accepted by them and adopted as their own. Despite this, it turns out that their formal and narrative explorations can be captured in a collective, relatively structured history, and that it is even possible to find close connections in them. Can these similarities – perhaps sometimes difficult to notice at first, superficial glance – be attributed to a common teacher? It seems that the fact that artists from all over the world are uniting in exhibitions during which they are paying tribute to their teacher, indicating the enormous importance of his ideas, thoughts and methods, is a sufficiently blunt answer to this question.

The exhibition is on view until 21 June 2025.

Curator: Katarzyna Zahorska

Artists: Ji-Hyun Bae, Valerij Baratheli, Carlota Carbonell Valero, Andrzej Cisowski, Joanna Danovska, Brigit Decressin, Michael Goldstrass, Sylwia Graya, Cosima Hawemann, Gudrun Hermen, Andrea C. Hoffer, Ewa Jaczynska, Taka Kagitomi, Gesine Kikol, Marta Klonowska, Christian Korda, Chidi Kwubiri, Alexandre Magno, Benjamin Nachtwey, Stefan Noss, Wolfgang Pilz, Christine Reifenberger, Katrin Roeber, Römer+Römer, Marina Sailer, Ekatherina Savtchenko, Nikita Schmitz, Catherine Shamugia, Anna Tatarczyk, Lubomir Typlt, Valeriano, Anna Vilents, Yunong Wang, Xin Zhou.