Text

The monograph of his work*, which came out in 2004, opens with a telling quote from Lon Pennock himself: 'My sculptures are about sculpture. The work I make is neither a medium of personal expression nor an expression of political ideals.'
Pennock's sculptural points of departure are a fixture in an oeuvre that is otherwise evolving. Since the second half of the 1980s, an increasing freedom with regard to material and composition can be detected in his work. Simple metal forms, such as blocks and rods, are seemingly disorderly stacked or lie and stand scattered on a large base plate. This working method is based on "throwing exercises" the artist did in his studio. He photographs the compositions thus 'accidentally' created in order to rearrange them later with the greatest precision.
In addition, Pennock searches for the origin of the material. The rough skin of unprocessed blocks of ore fascinates him. A flaking surface, patches of color, welds, rust and a butch remain visible. These traces of chance effects, the unevennesses actually, give his metal sculptures a strong poetic charge.
In the period between 1976 and 1985, the emphasis was on clarity and simplicity and the essence of things. Like "Intersection," which was placed in Kijkduin in 1981. A huge box of sheet steel seems to 'float' above a similarly shaped second box. Pennock is all about contrasts here: heavy and light, form and counterform, earthly and heavenly. A monumental totem in an urban setting.
The 1972 stainless steel "Tree" is an early work. Originally located on the Hoge Prins Willemstraat, it was later moved to Scheveningseweg at the head of Keizerstraat.

. Pennock at that time rejected all superfluous aesthetics, but his work was not yet completely stripped of them. The tree should not be understood simply as an abstraction of nature. The sculptor is concerned with reaching for simplicity: a stage in the search for the core.

*skulpture 1968-2003 - lon pennock, Publisher Lannoo