Jürgen Partenheimer spent just under a month in the spring of 2005 in the huge Copan building designed by Oskar Niemeyer in São Paulo. He sets down his confrontation with this building, the topography and climate, life in the city, the resulting reflections and sensations in the form of a diary. It is a very personal account of the processes involved in the creation of his work. By revealing his thoughts, experiences and moods to the reader without reservation, Partenheimer opens up new possibilities of reflexive participation and access to his artistic work.
Copan is a book that defenselessly reflects the artist's confrontation with his work

 

Jan Thorn-Prikker:

«Texts in which artists speak about their work are rare. Most artists speak only in the language of their art. They know the difference between speaking “about art”, as art critics and theorists do it, and speaking “as artists”, which can never be objective. The best texts are those that speak specifically from the experience of the artistic situation and describe the artist’s experience frankly and unsparingly.
As an artist’s text, Copan belongs to this rare genre. Its value lies not in any immediate comprehensibility for the reader, but rather in the closeness of what is spoken to what is done. The paradox of Partenheimer’s text lies in his ability to track his own experiences almost continuously and at the same time open them up for reflection.

This is the city, which comes in through the window of the apartment in which Partenheimer is drawing. However, it is of crucial importance to understand why it does not enter as such in the artist’s field of vision, but presents itself framed by a splendid panoramic window which dominates the entire space of the apartment, the architectural precision of which must perforce be taken into account, given its crucial role in taking in the view it provides. What I mean to say is that, to all intents and purposes, the violence exerted by the metropolis upon the artist’s senses is filtered and purified by the aesthetic treatment conferred upon it by the architecture of the Copan (as designed by Oscar Niemeyer). And this relationship between architecture and what is urban produces a fundamental difference – for, since it is not any ordinary window, the world we see outside it, through it, undergoes a transfiguration.»

 

Jürgen Partenheimer, Copan. Diario Paulistano (cover), Richter Verlag, 2006

2006 Munich – presentation of the “Copan - São Paulo Diary”.


2007 Presentation of “Copan - São Paulo Diary” and exhibition of the “Copan Drawings” at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil.