Nr 12 2020

This piece, Nr 12, was made by Armin Andreas Pangerl, sometime around 2020, using what looks like ink and colored pencil on paper. The overall effect is like a page torn from a fever dream. What grabs me first is how the handwriting becomes an active part of the image, blurring the line between text and image. It's almost like the words are trying to escape the page. The artist has worked and reworked the surface with layers of marks, adding depth and visual complexity. The colored pencils bring a naive, almost childlike quality to the portrait. Take the eyes, for instance. They are comically oversized, magnified by glasses, and gazing out at the viewer with a mix of curiosity and skepticism. And how about that hand, holding a pair of lips as if they were a delicate object? The hand feels clumsy, almost like it doesn't belong to the face. I can't help but think of the work of outsider artists like Adolf Wölfli, who similarly combined text and image in obsessive, intensely personal ways. In the end, this is a piece that resists easy categorization, inviting us to embrace ambiguity and find our own meaning in the chaos.