Panamarenko 1940 - now
A Profile
Visionary artist, experimenter of genius and prolific inventor, Panamarenko is a leading and remarkable figure in contemporary art.
Considered as one of the most important artist of the current European scene, Panamarenko (born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1940) studied at the local Académie des Beaux-Arts at a very young age, where he experimented with different materials and created a series of play objects in which utopia already plays an important role. His first exhibition was held at the Wide White Space Gallery in 1966, the year in which he adopted the pseudonym Panamarenko, an abbreviation of "Pan American Airlines Company".
Panamarenko's extraordinary sculptures--flying machines, submarines, and cars--blend science and art, technology and fantasy, the mechanical and the organic. For over thirty years this Belgian artist, who adopted the pseudonym Panamarenko in the 1960s, has obsessively explored movement, flight, space, energy and the force of gravity in his work. This new catalogue documents a major exhibition of his sculptures and drawings in London--an astounding spectacle that includes a giant flying saucer and his renowned "Aeromodeller", an airship that fills an entire gallery. Panamarenko is in a sense one of the most original and visionary artists of the postwar period: his works are aesthetic inventions rather than representations; they resonate with the poetic and fantastical dimensions of the different forms of earthly and extra-terrestrial motion--like hovering, floating, and flying--as well as his fascination with systems of energy, magnetic fields, and the cosmos.
Official Site
A Ronny Van de Velde initiative http://www.panamarenko.info/
A Profile
Born in 1940 in Antwerp, Belgium, where he lives and works. Studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp. In 1963 he exhibited his first works: Cooper Plates with Bullet-Holes. In 1965 he produced his first collages for Happening News, the first happenings carried out in Antwerp. He founded the Gallery Wide White Space in Antwerp in 1966, where he exhibited his first `poetic objects´. In 1967 he built his airplane Flugzeug. In 1968 he was invited by Joseph Beuys - whom he had met at the Gallery Wide White Space - and the Düsseldorf Academy to display, among other works, L´Avion and Prova Car. Between 1969 and 1971 he built L´Aeromodeller. He then moved to the house where he still lives together with his mother, who helped him plaid the cabin of his balloon. He carried out his first attempt to fly using hydrogen but soon gave up the idea due to safety reasons. Most of his work are kept in a hangar built by him in Bergeijk. This shelter was sponsored by Mia and Martin Visser. In 1972 he was invited by Harald Szeemann to participate in the Documenta 5; the L´Aeromodeller was displayed in the Fredericianum big room. He spent three months at the Cranfield Institute of Technology in Great Britain where he built and tested the U-Kontrol III. He published in 1975 The mechanism of gravity, closed systems of speed alterations as well as other texts issued by Marzona, from Bielefeld, Germany. In 1984 he started a series of travels which deeply influenced his work: "Until I was 45 years old I had never left my country, except when I went to New York and to Berlin: even then I always stayed within the gallery space and never went outside this circuit." First he went to the Furka mountains, in Switzerland, where he carried out his first Rugzak, his mountain chariot and the flying car K2; he then went to Egypt, to the Red Sea, where he discovered the maritime fauna; in the Maldives Islands he carried out experiments with his diving suit entitled The Portuguese Man of War. In the Amazon he looked for the hoazin, a pre-historic bird. In Japan both in 1992 and 1993 he held several exhibitions. In 1994 he built his two-pawed camel, Knikkebeen. He is now working on a submarine project. From the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo blurb
Wide White Space
Wide White Space was a gallery created by Anny De Decker et Bernd Lohaus in Antwerp. Opened in 1966, the Wide White Space closed in 1976. See Wide White Space, behind the museum, exhibition catalogue, La Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles; MAC, galeries contemporaines des Musées de Marseille, 1994-1996.
Bibliography
Nasce ad Anversa, Belgio, nel 1940. Frequenta dal 1955 al 1960 la Regia Accademia di Belle Arti di Anversa, studiando nel frattempo meccanica, chimica e scienze naturali.
Bibliografia essenziale
Libri:
Panamarenko The Mechanisms of Gravity... Bielefeld, Edition Marzona, 1975;
Panamarenko, Thays, H. The Complete Works, 1963-1992. Ghent, 1992;
Panamarenko Toy Model of Space (The Sun and the Stars). Antwerpen, Edition Ronny Van de Velde, 1993.
Articoli:
Hirsch, C. "Panamarenko et la mythologie de la science". In Panamarenko, Berlin/Otterlo/ Bruxelles, 1978;
Grisebach, L. "Panamarenko, Kunst ist Poesie". In Panamarenko, München, Haus der Kunst, 1982;
Panamarenko, Eisenhoet, B. "Wakantanka. Some Faxes by Panamarenko and Bedrich Eisenhoet". In Panamarenko, Tokyo, 1992.
Interviste:
Van Daalen, P. "Introductie en Fragmenten uit gesprekken met Panamarenko". In Panamarenko, Middelburg, 1975;
De Baere, B. e Hoet, Jan. "Panamarenko. An Interview". Flash Art Internatinal, maggio-giugno 1989.
