calendario eventi  :: 

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21/6/2007

Two exhibitions

Museum Moderner Kunst MUMOK, Wien

Sigmar Polke

curated by Edelbert Kob

With a big solo exhibition MUMOK pays tribute to one of the internationally most highly regarded German painters, Sigmar Polke, who is also considered one of the most important artists of the post-war period. A Retrospective brings together seminal works from the Frieder Burda, Josef Froehlich and Reiner Speck collections. With over 170 works it is one of the biggest Polke exhibitions of recent years and the first comprehensive presentation of the artist in Austria.

Due to the unique interaction between the Polke foci in the individual collections the exhibition offers an extensive and differentiated overall view of the development of his work in which, with the exception of photography, all the 'Polke genres' are represented. 60 large scale pictures and more that 110 works on paper from the last four decades substantiate the thematic diversity and stylistic pluralism of the artist who was born in 1941 in East Silesia and today lives in Cologne. His dense early oeuvre as well as his more recent work concerned with painterly technique and material experimentation is defined by transitions and the interplay between figuration and abstraction. It has references to traditions in art history and the flood of media images, conceptual reflection and a colourful, ornamental sensuality.

Even while still a student of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art Polke originated 'capitalist realism' other artists including his then long-time friend, Gerhard Richter. It was critically and ironically concerned with Pop Art, influenced by the promises of the consumer world, 'socialist realism' and the myths of modernism. He drew banal holiday scenes and advertising subjects with a ballpoint pen on cheap paper or ironically monumentalised them in panels such as Liebespaar (1967) or Reis (1963). He satirised disrespectfully the art business and an exaggerated image of the artist in the famous picture Höhere Wesen befahlen… (1969) or in the picture Moderne Kunst (1968).

In the late 60’s the so-called fabric and half-tone dot screen images became his trade mark. From a critical standpoint and ironic distance he directed his attention to the dreams and promises of the blossoming consumer and leisure society: printed fabrics, often with patterns bordering on kitsch, served as background for paintings such as Dürer Hase (1968) or Carl Andre in Delft (1968).

At the same time Polke turned to mass media image production. Initially he copied printed examples with caricature-like exaggeration. Following this he became increasingly interested in the half-tone screens used for photographic reproductions and transferred enlarged newspapers photographs to canvas. In part the dots developed into independent ornaments and were superimposed on the painting’s 'subjects' such as in the well-known pictures Freundinnen (1965/66) or Interieur (1966). On the other hand, in a gesture of self-parody, he transformed the dots into colourfully painted figures as in Kartoffelköpfe (Mao &LBJ) (1965) thus humorously distancing himself from his own means of expression.

Over the years Polke expanded his pictorial language with a number of new stylistic, formal and content-related aspects. Gloss paint works and poured paintings that were created using processes that were only under limited control and subject to subsequent processes of change, earned him a reputation for being an alchemist amongst painters. Using photo chemicals he investigated his painting materials for their sensitivity to light and heat. As if moved by external forces, colours run on fabric and suggest subjects – which Polke comments with a wink when he called his picture Tischerücken (1981). Richly coloured, large scale paintings are built up of overlaid layers of gloss paint. In works such as Gangster (1988) he included materials which shine through, so the stretcher construction is visible in the composition or he plays with the grid as a space-defining element as in the painting Weißer Raum.

Behind Polke’s games with contradictions and clichéd ideas, the humorous commentaries and picture puzzles, there is a humanist and culturally critical ethos. The solo show verifies the unbelievable bandwidth of his oeuvre and its formal and thematic diversity. After being presented in the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden the exhibition can be seen in MUMOK from June 22 till October 7, 2007.

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Markus Huemer - It could have been another good exhibition...

curatec by Elizabeth Kob

In his works the artist, who was born in 1968 in Linz and lives in Berlin, investigates and initiates an interplay between art which is generated by technical media and painting. By comparing and contrasting these two art genres which are usually regarded as oppositional, he is analysing and extending the character of each of them. In his paintings and interactive media installations he refers to the heroes of art history who have already shaken and renewed painting and redefined pictures by means of performative (Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein) or media-related strategies(Sigmar Polke). In a thoughtful reference to Mannerism as a style in art history which considered historical citation as the basis of every renewal, Huemer calls his art 'media Mannerism'. In the process, references to history and breaches of convention lie as close to one another as conceptual strictness and cheerful (self)irony something that also finds a voice in the title of the exhibition.

Exemplary for Huemer’s ironic enlivenment of history is his artistic, media-based interpretation of early Sigmar Polke paintings in which he pokes 'serious' fun at the conventions of painting but at about his media pictures thus manufacturing a critical distance to both of them. With that Huemer takes the instruments of irony, parody and travesty as used in the history of painting and transfers them into digital media and real space. With the repeated use of bird motifs—the symbolic descendents of the messengers of the gods—in both the paintings and the media works, he is alluding to the historical role of the artist as creator and prophet. But at the same time he puts up for discussion the applicability of that role model in a society where media technology is rationalised.
The artist does not only allow interaction between painting and media-supported art, the past and the present, he also ascribes an interactive role to the public. In his media installations the viewer becomes a user and a trigger for permanently changing image and text structures which, for all their apparent fortuity, still follow clearly programmed parameters.

Along with art history Markus Huemer studied classical philology and philosophy and has always accompanied his art with exacting theoretical texts. They form the foundation of his work and, at the same time, stimulate a permanent discourse around it.

The exhibition presents Markus Huemer’s paintings and media work to an extent that has not happened before. Parallel to the MUMOK exhibition there is a further presentation in the villa of the private collector, Heinz Ploner (Sammlung Ploner) with the title 'Ich kann hypnotisieren! Was kannst Du ? [I can hypnotise. What can you do?]'. In addition, in cooperation with MUMOK, an artist’s manifesto will be published alongside the catalogue.

MUMOK
Museumsplatz 1 - Wien

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