Landschaft, 2012
Glazed ceramic
12 x 10 x 6 inches
Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce Norbert Prangenberg: The Last Works, an exhibition of sculptures and drawings at 529 West 20th Street. Opening on Thursday, February 27, 2014, the exhibition is the first presentation of Prangenberg's sculpture in a New York gallery since 1986. Twenty of the artist's delicately constructed, abstract ceramics will be on view, as well as a selection of related paintings. They are the last works that the artist completed before his premature death in June 2012. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, with an essay by John Yau.
Norbert Prangenberg began a residency—his first in the United States—in March 2012 at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. During his six-week stay, the artist worked at a feverish pace, producing a remarkably diverse body of small-scale ceramics, the majority of which are abstractions based on either landscapes (Landschaften) or portrait heads (Köpfe). Regardless of their subjects, they all manifest the artist's career-long, joyful engagement with materiality.
“Everything he did was rooted in materiality, ranging from the tangible to the ethereal, and in the transformational progression of his materials,” writes critic John Yau. “He loved working with stuff that invited his direct physical engagement…that could be shaped, pushed around, spread, spontaneously dispersed, and incised.”
Prangenberg never attempted to disguise the way in which his sculptures were made. Often, he glazed only a small part of each piece, allowing the raw materials—in the case of this exhibition, either red, pink, or white terra cotta—to maintain their unique character. Narrative content in these works is scant. Some of them are whimsical, others downright frightening. One work in particular, Kopf mit Tränen (2012), is especially poignant. It portrays a head (the artist's?) crying long, cylindrical tears, dramatically exaggerated in length. Certainly, Prangenberg knew of his grim fate prior to his arrival in America. Regardless of that knowledge, however, he remained resolute in creating a memorable body of work—celebratory, compelling, and quietly confident despite its obvious material vulnerability.
Born in Rommerskirchen-Nettesheim, Germany in 1949, Norbert Prangenberg apprenticed as a gold- and silversmith before turning to fine art. From 1993 to 2012, he held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Since 1981, his work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, including sixteen solo-exhibitions at Galerie Karsten Greve (Cologne and Paris); eight at Galerie Barbara Gross (Munich); and five at Produzentengalerie (Hamburg), among others. Most recently, his work was the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum (2004-2005, Krefeld, Germany); the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2005, Germany); and the Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen (2008, Magdeburg, Germany). Prangenberg's work is featured in the collections of major museums around Europe.
Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to represent the Estate of Norbert Prangenberg.
Norbert Prangenberg: The Last Works will be on view at Garth Greenan Gallery, 529 West 20th Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues), through Saturday, April 5, 2014. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. For more information, please contact Garth Greenan at (212) 929-1351, or email garth@garthgreenan.com.
