Surface and Beneath

Philosophy, says Georg Lukács, is essentially homesickness: the longing for everywhere. Panyoczki's homesickness spans the entire world. It connects the once-separated power blocs through his birthplace Budapest in the East with Zurich in the West, the refuge of his family after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. For 25 years, he has been traveling between Switzerland and New Zealand. Panyoczki has elevated his life as an emigrant to an artistic standpoint: he tirelessly leaves one homeland to then revisit the other. Just as the artist's journey reflects absence through traces that are present, so does his work. Panyoczki belongs to the generation of the 1980s, which has polemically distanced itself from the mainstream of conceptual art. However, he has not simply returned to representational painting; instead, he has turned his conceptual interest towards the question of the mediality of art. This monograph presents his works from the last thirteen years and is illuminated from various perspectives by authors Wystan Curnow, Brett Graham, Herbert Lachmayer, Marianne Karabelnik, and Beat Wyss.