Peter Panyoczki: ORIGINS
November 14, 2016 - January 22, 2017
Upper Galleries
Peter Panyoczki, Gwyneth (2015), Mixed media on aluminium Dibond on light box
Born 1953 in Budapest, Hungary, Peter Panyoczki escaped with his parents to Switzerland in 1957 following the Hungarian Revolution of ‘56. Panyoczki lived and studied in Switzerland for the next two decades, graduating with a Master of Arts from the University of Zuerich in 1980. He was involved in many projects during the 1980s notably film production, and artist residencies in the US and Europe. Peter made his first visit to New Zealand in 1992, deciding to immigrate and become a New Zealand resident in 1995. Peter now has dual New Zealand-Swiss citizenship, living in Kaiwaka. His exhibition history is extensive with representation in many solo/group exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia, USA and New Zealand.
Peter Panyoczki may be regarded as a mixed media artist, working in a hybrid of forms and mediums: painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and digital technology. This exhibition presents an introduction to his oeuvre rather than a definitive overview, highlighting key aspects in his practice through the display of two specific bodies of work.
The other part of the show is entitled ORIGINS and features a newly developed body of work by Peter Panyoczki. Twelve light-boxes present the faces of individuals, each being of a different cultural background. The people represented were photographed by Panyoczki, all looking directly in to the lens of the camera. They were ‘given the instruction to take up the expression as if they would see the world for the first time, as if they would suddenly realize that they do exist. What results in a certain expression of astonishment about the miracle of being. On that existential level we are even more the same’. Thousands of 1mm holes are drilled through the Di-bond aluminium surface in Braille positions, telling in blind language their respective creation mythologies. The light appears as a ‘meaningful’ starry night on their faces, like a DNA of a narrative within us, which is there, but which we can’t entirely decipher. This series is a work in progress with new faces to be added as it tours to other venues.
Accompanying the lightboxes is a 3 metre tall corten steel tower, Babel, which also features audio-tape recordings taken from interviews with his twelve subjects. The voices can be heard individually but sometimes overlap in a cacophonic way and are joined by other sound effects (recordings sourced from NASA, birds, short-wave radio and tribal voices). Birds’ nests collected by the artist are laid on shelves which are protruding from the tower itself; in all with a reference to the place of our origins, our birth place, the Tower of Babel narrative in the Bible and high-rise apartment blocks.