Karl-Peter Penke studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design, Camberwell College of Arts and The Prince’s Drawing School (now the Royal Drawing School), and is currently completing an MA at the Royal College of Art.
The artist sources his playful work from observations of the world. The complexities which bombard our day-to-day interactions, together with our nagging historical baggage, are pulped, filtered and regurgitated as pictorial vignettes:
“I suppose it’s about resistance – the idea of unexpected obstructions, and the manner of our response. It could be little, harmless things, such as knocking over a mug of tea, or arguing with your mum (mine thinks the Bee Gees are better than the Beatles), or the jab of a queue-barger’s elbow as you board an overcrowded commuter train, or it could be something more abstract, like the democratic election of an unlikely candidate to high political office.
How do you deal with unease?
My anachronistic, apocalyptic, superhero soldier, sometimes headless, appeared about two years ago, an unreflected and intuitive drawing process created from my own angst using childhood memories. Reality through fiction; an analogue invention in a very perplexing, digitalised, world.”
‘Um’. A/P. Etching. 12 x 15 cm. 2016.
‘Tangle’. A/P. Etching. 10 x 10 cm. 2015. (Framed)
‘Two Cavalrysts’. A/P. Etching. 8 x 9 cm. 2014
‘Plumes Aren`t Enough (Naples ’15). A/P. Etching. 9.5 x 12 cm. 2016
‘Mutiny’. A/P. Etching. 12 x 15 cm. 2016
‘Dog with Zebra’. A/P. Etching. 11 x 15 cm. 2016 (Framed )