Nr 5 2020

Curator: Look at the intricate details! This is "Nr 5," a mixed-media artwork by Armin Andreas Pangerl, created in 2020. It combines drawing, graphic art, and ink in a very contemporary way. Editor: My initial reaction is chaotic, but fascinating. It's like a visual stream of consciousness, a dense layering of text and geometric shapes. The scale seems intimate, like a page from a personal journal. Curator: Exactly! Pangerl utilizes the very process of creation, the labor of mark-making, as the subject. The repetitive lines, the handwritten notes—these become the visual elements themselves. We see the consumption of materials reflected in the visual density. Editor: I see it too, now that you mention the repetitive use of lines. However, the geometric elements feel so precisely rendered amidst the seeming chaos. There’s an undeniable structural element too: note the carefully arranged planes, the tension created between line and form. Curator: And consider the interplay between the drawn elements and the text. Pangerl seems to be collapsing traditional hierarchies between different forms of creative labor—writing and visual art. His artistic approach challenges the viewer to consider both. Editor: Perhaps it's a philosophical enquiry on paper. I appreciate that contrast of colors used in various structural focal points in the image, contrasting with more simplified monochrome planes of geometric patterns and typography. Curator: Absolutely. By focusing on the materiality of the artwork and the act of creation, Pangerl brings us closer to the artist’s own lived experience and questions the way modernism might transform in new directions. Editor: It's definitely challenged my assumptions about modernism. I'm leaving this artwork with a new appreciation of it.