Artist Spotlight Tour: Melanie Pankau

Ascent, 2023. Acrylic on panel, 25 x 26 in.

Artist Spotlight Tour with Melanie Pankau

Saturday, November 9, 1:00 - 1:45 PM

Dive into the meditative and contemplative world of Melanie Pankau, whose innovative practice as a painter is deeply intertwined with her daily meditation and automatic drawing routines.

A World That Breathes Behind Itself 

Melanie Pankau

On View September 7, 2024 - February 9, 2025

The Rochester Art Center presents a solo exhibition of paintings and etched glass drawings by artist Melanie Pankau.

Pankau’s practice as a painter is guided by her daily meditation practice followed by a process of automatic drawing where the geometric forms and diagrammatic structures in her work unfold. For over a decade she has studied various meditation traditions and techniques and integrates this parallel practice into her paintings that embody and reveal a contemplative consciousness. The crux of her work centers around using the language of abstraction to counter the normative states of self and culture that she experiences as fragmented and individualist. Through the investigations of geometric forms, she strives to create compositions that emanate stillness and a balanced state.

The exhibition A World That Breathes Behind Itself features a constellation-like installation of etched glass drawings and geometric abstract paintings providing a contemplative space for quietude and respite.

The etched glass drawings trace the origins of Pankau’s process and the artifacts of her meditation practice. After each daily meditation, she draws in her sketchbook. The drawings are a type of automatic writing in visual form and are the foundational compositions for the paintings. Each drawing is installed at varying heights to draw the viewer’s eye and mind away from linear thought and perceptual patterns. As the overhead lights shine through each piece of glass a shadow of the drawing is reflected on the wall. Metaphorically speaking, it is only when the light illuminates the glass that the image is revealed.

The paintings in the exhibition center around the interlacing of repeated geometric forms. Through the process of making, the woven iterative marks are sanded down to reveal the underlying patterns that sit just below the surface. These veiled lattice-like structures symbolize our innate interconnectedness, reciprocity, and unity. Overall, the compositions become containers for meditative qualities of calm, expansiveness, and our multidimensional nature.

The images in the exhibition are not representations of our outer, physical world, but the experience of an inner landscape that is grounded and quiet, offering an invitation for introspection.

Artist Bio

Pankau received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She also studied at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Thomas Barry Fine Arts, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Boston Center for the Arts, Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, TuckUnder Pavilion, McCormick Gallery, Art Miami, and EXPO Chicago. She has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Pankau has received grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Metropolitan Arts Council, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her work is represented by McCormick Gallery in Chicago.