Jürgen Partenheimer «Vasts Apart»
[Hamburger Block]

Häusler Contemporary is proud to announce the exhibition Jürgen Partenheimer «Vasts Apart» [Hamburger Block]. This group of works was first presented at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1990 and was acquired for a private collection. Thirty years later, we are showing this extraordinary cycle in Switzerland for the first time.

"A year earlier (1989), when Jürgen Partenheimer was working on the cycle of drawings and watercolors that the Kunsthalle Hamburg is now exhibiting in the room of master drawings, he had a clear concept: “visualizing creative thought”. Thus begins an article by Evelyn Preuss from 1990 about «Vasts Apart», a group of works consisting of 11 watercolors and 34 drawings which Werner Hofmann, then director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, exhibited in order to show how independent and distinct Jürgen Partenheimer’s work is from that of Paul Klee, to whom he was often compared in the 1980s."

Writing about this group of works in the artist’s book for the exhibition, Werner Hofmann recognizes “that the form (drawing) is to be perceived as a process”, and he gives a convincing explanation for this insight. “The categories of Partenheimer’s designs become recognizable when we accept the interpretation that his works suggest: that it is possible to understand the process of the form taking shape as one of surveying and taking over the picture plane. But these arrangements have a finality that appears unobtrusively, not categorically, which is why it would be wrong to speak of completion. Not only is there still a reference back to the process of production, but this process interacts with the resulting placement through intent and energy; it controls this placement.” The intent and energy of the watercolors and drawings refer in their entirety to those “areas of ordering” in which their contexts are explored and recognized even as the works are being created.

Bruno Glatt, 2022

The energy of standstill, the power of stopping give us attention, they become an image. A perception towards the centre and a thinking from the centre: Examination of movement, the question of its meaning.
Vasts apart, separate worlds - far away, bridging infinity. [1].

Jürgen Partenheimer

[1] Cat. Exhibit. Jürgen Partenheimer, Vasts Apart. A Cycle of 34 Drawings and 11 Watercolours, Hamburger Kunsthalle 1990

«Der Künstler lotet den Raum der Zeit zwischen Wahrnehmung und Empfindung.»

Jürgen Partenheimer (*1947) lives and works in Munich and Italy.
Jürgen Partenheimer consistently develops his work from abstraction and is one of the outstanding German artists of his generation. With critical theory and literature as references in terms of content, the oeuvre comprises painting, drawing, sculpture, artists' books and text.
In the 1980s, Jürgen Partenheimer became internationally known through his participation in the Paris, São Paulo and Venice Biennales.
Selected solo museum exhibitions include the Nationalgalerie Berlin, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, National Museum of Fine Art, Beijing, CGAC in Santiago de Compostela, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, S.M.A.K. Gent, Pinacoteca do Estado in São Paulo, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Sammlung Falckenberg-Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Musée Ariana, Geneva.
His work has received numerous awards, including the Spanish Art Critics Award, Madrid; NEA National Endowment for the Arts, New York; Canada Council Grant, Montréal; Copan Grant, São Paulo; Nirox Foundation Award, Johannesburg; Guest of Honour of the German Academy, Villa Massimo, Rome and Distinguished Residency Award, Emily Carr University for Art + Design, Vancouver.