Ascan Pinckernelle

Untitled, 2004

Ascan Pinckernelle creates his ‘architectural images’ in multi-partite cycles dealing with buildings he discovers either at the places where he lives or during his travels. The buildings, isolated from their urban context, have their origins in the architectural principles of Classic Modernism, or are oriented by such buildings. The artist approaches them by taking photographs and drawing sketches at different times of the day while researching their history. In claiming the buildings as his own in the course of the artistic process, Ascan Pinckernelle highlights their structural features. As their shapes become clearer, a graphic understanding is attained of the modular, minimalist building shapes that have informed our aesthetic understanding in our everyday lives, and that were part of the ideologies and the enthusiasm for new beginnings of the 20^th century. The historic precursors of Pinckernelle’s architectural analyses are the architectural works and objects created by artists and architects such as Donald Judd, Erwin Heerich and Franz Erhard Walther. Together with the architectural photography of Dan Graham, they provide the backdrop against which the artist’s architectural images might be seen.