LUKAS
PANEK
A painterly yet digital image of the infamous photograph Atomic Cloud Rises Over Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, shows a blurred 45,000-foot-tall mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki, a few minutes after the nuclear bomb was detonated in August 9, 1945. By diming the original image, the artist attempts to tarnish the presence of the atomic explosion — in hopes of its complete erasure —, while also preserving the remnant, an important aspect for the construction of the collective memory of a disaster.
Lukas Panek creates paintings and videos that explore the circulation and modification of images nowadays. Starting from various points of entry, he repeatedly directs his attention to the subtleties and economies of contemporary image production. Examining hierarchies within image-driven cultures, Panek dissects not only those between single images and their contents themselves, but further addresses the critical relationship between their use and reproduction. He identifies them as depreciated compan-ions of everyday life, seeking to empower their social dimension in realms that reach much further beyond the private and personal.
Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes
in collaboration with ICAN
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is an exhibition of posters that call for universal nuclear disarmament. Each made by a different artist, the group comprises historical and newly
commissioned works that detail a cultural history of disarmament movements and evidence the diversity of ways in which artists have expressed the need to ban the bomb. ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is designed for maximum agility and economic effectiveness, relying on a black and white palette both for its impact and ease o reproduction. We asked artists to ensure their works can exist on a variety of supports, ephemera such as posters, postcards, billboards, banners, flags, t-shirts and social media posts, as we aspire to achieve the widest possible circulation of this message.
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB presents the works of foundational conceptual artists Art & Language; pop hero, Keith Haring; legendary feminists, Guerrilla Girls; performance artists Regina José Galindo and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, as well
as eminent sculptors Magdalena Abakanowicz and Isamu Noguchi. It also features indelible photographs by Robert Del Tredici and Ken Domon alongside protest graphics from social movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), founded in 1958 and still active; the epic Peace Squadron and Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms (VAANA); and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Additionally, it examines how stories are told, from the theater of Bread and Puppet to films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Marguerite Duras / Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, to an unexpected survey of literature, from an early
anticipation of an atomic bomb, first envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1918, to the viscera spoken word poetry of Jayne Cortez.
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB, organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes in collaboration with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), is presented on the occasion of the Second Meeting of State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) held at the United Nations in 2023.
To organize en exhibition of ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB please contact curatorial assistant Verana Codina.
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