the enigma of arrival | Jürgen Partenheimer

The solo exhibition of Jürgen Partenheimer, entitled il mistero dell‘arrivo, presents a body of new work of cross-media concepts including sculpture, painting, drawings and text following his five-year commitment to the comprehensive group of works of One Hundred Poets.

In the exhibition, the dialogue with sculpture, painting and drawing, their common presence enters a conversation about the complexity of the order of things and addresses the space they conquer and assume as an unequivocal position: Topos, Tracks and Maze draw the coordinates in which Small Shapes, the Heart of Flowers, La Fortune and Drenched Moon Rising meet. Within the eventful zones of imagination, we experience the Redress, the bringing back of the restoration of balance as well as a new beginning after five years of concentrated work on the One Hundred Poets.

Further information on the individual works can be found by clicking on the images. More in-depth information on individual groups of works can be found in the Viewing Rooms on Sculpture and Space, One Hundred Poets and Calliope.


All Photos: Dirk Tacke | unless otherwise stated 

"In his sculptures, just as in his drawings and paintings, Partenheimer orchestrates and sets in motion, a poetically fragile process of sensation and discovery."

- Ivo Mesquita, Curator at Pinacoteca Do Estado, São Paulo

Studio Vancouver (2014) | Photo: David Simmonds

Jürgen Partenheimer
La Fortune (la robe des choses) II, 2022

Wood, bronze and silver
74 x 80 x 60 cm
29 1/8 x 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 in

"The series of drawings collectively titled ‚Seeds & Tracks‘ investigates what it means to encounter objects and, after the encounter to draw. It does not mean that the drawings are representations of the objects encountered, only that they might be. I am struck by the possibility that the turn to drawing might yield a representation, or an abstraction, or both, and that drawings called Seeds or Tracks are no more about seeds or tracks than they are seeds or tracks. They are just as likely a way of noting the mysterious ripples of the imagination when something – a thought, an image – drops onto its surface, or of following, as one does in the dead of night, a trail of thinking that leads to quickening of the pulse."

– Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Author and Art critic, Johannesburg

"Like a musical composition, Partenheimer's sculptures vibrate with the rhythm, repetition and juxtapositions of forms. Their abstract language lets the mind move more flexibly and give full reign to the imagination within the visually perceptible and physically experienceable space formed by the work."

– Ivo Mesquita, Curator at Pinacoteca Do Estado, São Paulo

"Jürgen Partenheimer’s visual world immediately captivates us via its floating, delicate ease, its disavowal of loud gestures and elaborate formats, its formal and tonal understatement. [...] In his oeuvre the artist succeeds uniquely in departing from the idea of an objectively experienced world, transforming it into a cognitive act of seeing.“

– Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, former chief curator Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Jürgen Partenheimer taught at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Royal College of Art, Edinburgh, the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and at the San Francisco Art Institute and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence among others.

The artist lives and works in Munich and in Italy.

→ artist page


Photo: Wolfgang Stahl