Installation View, Lukas Panek Graduation Show Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 2020.

Lukas Panek’s images document the variety of representation in today’s online culture. Different pieces of information converge and create ambiguous narratives. 

Through this process, familiar forms of narration are deliberately undermined. This happens through the free interplay of personally and anonymously sourced images. 

Panek shows personal moments and reveals intimate relationships. At the same time, the mediated affects gain a more general validity because they lean on a global stream of images. 

When you look at them, they become archetypes of a universal experience: the ba- sic forms of our coexistence. 

“The pictures I show are portraits of personal encounters that come up in my everyday life. It takes time to figure out which image is important. 

In the presentation, the image is given a physical presence that frees itself from virtuality and turns into a static carrier of meaning.” 

Lukas Panek’s paintings are produced at peripheral online printing companies. At first glance, the artistic gesture is invisible. 

The industrial fabric which has become the dominant material for the image has a seamless surface, even if it retains the slight shimmer and fine structure that is reminiscent of a digital screen. 

Though the materiality of the picture is captivating, a closer look reveals an almost her- metic nature. In his selection, Panek shows how independent the 

pictures really are, because they never lose their fleeting character. Even for the viewer, they remain ambiguous. Due to their universal validity, they are simultaneously 

excerpts of a global experience and a reflection of a personal world. Essentially, they are images for all of us to share. 

by Julia Gardener

Installation View, Lukas Panek Graduation Show Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 2020.

Lukas Panek’s images document the variety of representation in today’s online culture. Different pieces of information converge and create ambiguous narratives. 

Through this process, familiar forms of narration are deliberately undermined. This happens through the free interplay of personally and anonymously sourced images. 

Panek shows personal moments and reveals intimate relationships. At the same time, the mediated affects gain a more general validity because they lean on a global stream of images. 

When you look at them, they become archetypes of a universal experience: the ba- sic forms of our coexistence. 

“The pictures I show are portraits of personal encounters that come up in my everyday life. It takes time to figure out which image is important. 

In the presentation, the image is given a physical presence that frees itself from virtuality and turns into a static carrier of meaning.” 

Lukas Panek’s paintings are produced at peripheral online printing companies. At first glance, the artistic gesture is invisible. 

The industrial fabric which has become the dominant material for the image has a seamless surface, even if it retains the slight shimmer and fine structure that is reminiscent of a digital screen. 

Though the materiality of the picture is captivating, a closer look reveals an almost her- metic nature. In his selection, Panek shows how independent the 

pictures really are, because they never lose their fleeting character. Even for the viewer, they remain ambiguous. Due to their universal validity, they are simultaneously 

excerpts of a global experience and a reflection of a personal world. Essentially, they are images for all of us to share. 

by Julia Gardener