Sigmar Polke
dal 16/9/2000 al 2/11/2000
Segnalato da
16/9/2000
Sigmar Polke
ZKM_Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
Sigmar Polke (born 1941) has been a central figure in German art ever since the appearance of his first works in the 1960s. A profound insight into the decisive stations in Polke's development as an artist is conveyed by our exhibition, which pivots on works made in the 1960s and presents some 50 works on paper, 16 paintings and three photo-works from the Froehlich collection.
Works from the Froehlich Collection.
Sigmar Polke (born 1941) has been a central figure in German art ever since the appearance of his first works in the 1960s. A profound insight into the decisive stations in Polke's development as an artist is conveyed by our exhibition, which pivots on works made in the 1960s and presents some 50 works on paper, 16 paintings and three photo-works from the Froehlich collection.
By means of his imaginative, subtle
exploration into the possible ways of
perceiving reality, Polke boldly and
playfully re-defines what a picture is
capable of achieving. With pointed wit,
he communicates to the spectator that
doubts about the image can be
precisely what brings about an
incessant re-invention of painting.
Starting with the profane material of
everyday culture, Polke interprets
images of reality, as opposed to reality
itself, and attempts in ever-different
ways to demonstrate and overcome the
illusory character of the image. For this
reason, his citation of styles and motifs
plays an important role. In the painting
Moderne Kunst (Modern Art), for
instance, he satirizes tendencies in
contemporary painting. In other
pictures, the trivial visual worlds
conveyed by newspaper and magazine
photographs, which he breaks down into
enlarged screening and dots, serve as
the vehicles for the artist's flight of
imagination. By reducing the mass
media to their elementary structures,
he points to their manipulated reality
content. Similarly, the simplified,
comic-like visual language of the
drawings produced in the period
1963-69 are derived from advertising
slogans and from the clichés churned
out by the culture of mass
entertainment.
Industrially produced decorative fabrics
represent a further source of inspiration
for Polke's work. These intricate and
brightly patterned backgrounds compete
with the actual motif and in this way
themselves become a subject. In other
pictures, Polke questions the role of the
artist as author. Recurrent themes are
the potato as a metaphor for creative
force, the hand as the actual producer
of art, and 'superior beings' whose
orders the artist is obliged to execute.
Polke puts an ironic distance between
his work and the socially moulded
notion of the artist-creator.
Experimental photography also plays an
important role in his striving to display
constantly new image forms. In the
14-part series Bärenkampf (Bear Fight),
Polke works with the productivity of
coincidence in the chemical process of
photographic development, a pictorial
technique that the artist later
transferred to his work on canvas.
Polke's oeuvre disowns stylistic
aspiration of any kind. He detaches
material and motifs from the original
context, transports them into the
realms of the grotesque, and with
humour refuses to accept the criteria of
traditional art.
mnk - Museum for Contemporary Art - Postfach 6909 76049 Karlsruhe
ZKM - Lorenzstraße 9 76135 Karlsruhe
DE Germany
Tel. 0721/8100-1300
Fax 0721/8100-1309