HOORAY! Finally! It’s happening: Sigmar Polke would have been celebrating his 80th birthday this year. Since the foundation was established in 2018, we have been looking forward to this anniversary, which we would like to celebrate with you – together with Polke’s friends and associates, other artists, academics, and art aficionados.
On November 12, 2021, the anniversary exhibition, Productive Image Interference: Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives Today, instigated by the Anna Polke Foundation, will open at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (November 13, 2021–February 6, 2022). Polke’s work is being brought together with ones by today’s generation of artists and linked, for the first time, to current discourses around imagery and media in terms of image interference. A festival over several days, from November 25 to 27, 2021, is being held at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to accompany the exhibition, also organized by the Anna Polke Foundation, where presentations by international academics and artists will be developing new perspectives on Polke’s work in direct dialogue with contemporary works.
Information on the anniversary project and festival program can be found here
While Sigmar Polke was studying at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf during the early 1960s, his interest soon turned to the imagery of the time that was being widely disseminated through the mass media. The transmitting and disrupting, the transforming and recoding of such images, including the visual glitches that resulted or were exposed, became a motif and early trademark in his Rasterbilder, paintings based on the halftone printing technique. Yet such productive image interference did not end with Capitalist Realism. Reproduction, manipulation, enlargement, multiple exposures, color experiments, printing errors, and collage – the interference, or glitches, present in images, as well as the superimposing and transforming of imagery, and sources of imagery detached from their original context remained essential strategies in Polke’s work. Based on current research, which views Polke as a universally contemporaneous and postmodern artist’s artist employing the most wide-ranging sources, the exhibition and festival will be focusing, for the first time, on this aspect in particular, one that permeates Polke’s entire oeuvre.
Polke Post 13 - Anniversary project, Productive Image Interference: Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives Today
POLKE POST 13
Productive Image Interference
Polke’s experimental approach to various media, contexts, and materials relies on the potential of the supposedly flawed, indistinct, and mutable. His works delight in the deceptiveness of imagery, questioning habits of viewing and (manipulated) imagery’s agency across a range of approaches and differing media. Such productive image interference likewise represents a central strategy for today’s generation of international artists. In a similar fashion today, their works display new artistic attitudes and approaches emphasizing image interference as a productive point of departure for creative practices seeking to negotiate cultural, artistic, and political issues.
The Festival taking place over several days (November 25-27, 2021) at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf examines image interference’s origins, visual perception, and manifestations, as well as its productive potential – then and now – in the form of presentations by both theorists and artists.
Invited guests from various disciplines, including Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, and Magnus Schäfer, will be exploring new perspectives on both Sigmar Polke’s work and art production today. Students from the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, will be representing the youngest generation of artists.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Düsseldorf very soon!
Anna Polke, Kathrin Barutzki, Dana Bergmann, Nelly Gawellek, Charlotte Lang, Nicole Ruppert & Sophia Stang
The patron of the anniversary project is Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The anniversary project is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kunststiftung NRW, and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
EXHIBITION
Productive Image Interference: Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives Today , Kunsthalle Düsseldorf , November 11, 2021–February 6, 2022, with Kerstin Brätsch, Phoebe Collings-James, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Trevor Paglen, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Max Schulze, Avery Singer
Curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Nelly Gawellek (Anna Polke-Stiftung) with Gregor Jansen (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf)
FESTIVAL
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, November 25–27, 2021
with contributions by: Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, Magnus Schäfer, students of the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, and others
The Festival taking place over several days (November 25-27, 2021) at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf examines image interference’s origins, visual perception, and manifestations, as well as its productive potential – then and now – in the form of presentations by both theorists and artists.
Invited guests from various disciplines, including Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, and Magnus Schäfer, will be exploring new perspectives on both Sigmar Polke’s work and art production today. Students from the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, will be representing the youngest generation of artists.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Düsseldorf very soon!
Anna Polke, Kathrin Barutzki, Dana Bergmann, Nelly Gawellek, Charlotte Lang, Nicole Ruppert & Sophia Stang
The exhibition is being curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Nelly Gawellek (both from the Anna Polke Foundation) together with Gregor Jansen (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf). Kerstin Brätsch and Camille Henrot have both produced new work especially for the exhibition.
The patron of the anniversary project is Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The anniversary project is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kunststiftung NRW, and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
EXHIBITION
Productive Image Interference: Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives Today , Kunsthalle Düsseldorf , November 11, 2021–February 6, 2022, with Kerstin Brätsch, Phoebe Collings-James, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Trevor Paglen, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Max Schulze, Avery Singer
Curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Nelly Gawellek (Anna Polke-Stiftung) with Gregor Jansen (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf)
FESTIVAL
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, November 25–27, 2021
with contributions by: Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, Magnus Schäfer, students of the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, and others
The survey of over 100 works by Kerstin Brätsch, Phoebe Collings-James, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Trevor Paglen, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Max Schulze, and Avery Singer demonstrates such a cross-generational and shared attitude to the image, which is being examined in three sections: Sieht man ja, was es ist (You Can See What It Is) investigates the social and political dimensions of image interference by considering, among other things, the use and agency of (media) imagery. History of Everything focuses attention on pre-existent imagery as the source of all newly produced images, highlighting the circumstances of their genesis. The artists’ non-hierarchical and idiosyncratic approaches to imagery not only calls conventions and myths into question but also sets new narratives in motion. Desastres und andere bare Wunder (Desastres and Other Sheer Miracles) concentrates on the agency of the materials, and the production processes that lead to interference manifesting itself in imagery in a range of ways. The limits of the genres and media available to art are likewise probed, as are viewers’ perceptions.
The Festival taking place over several days (November 25-27, 2021) at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf examines image interference’s origins, visual perception, and manifestations, as well as its productive potential – then and now – in the form of presentations by both theorists and artists.
Invited guests from various disciplines, including Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, and Magnus Schäfer, will be exploring new perspectives on both Sigmar Polke’s work and art production today. Students from the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, will be representing the youngest generation of artists.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Düsseldorf very soon!
Anna Polke, Kathrin Barutzki, Dana Bergmann, Nelly Gawellek, Charlotte Lang, Nicole Ruppert & Sophia Stang
The exhibition is being curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Nelly Gawellek (both from the Anna Polke Foundation) together with Gregor Jansen (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf). Kerstin Brätsch and Camille Henrot have both produced new work especially for the exhibition.
The patron of the anniversary project is Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The anniversary project is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kunststiftung NRW, and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
EXHIBITION
Productive Image Interference: Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives Today, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, November 11, 2021–February 6, 2022, with Kerstin Brätsch, Phoebe Collings-James, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Trevor Paglen, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Max Schulze, Avery Singer
Curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Nelly Gawellek (Anna Polke-Stiftung) with Gregor Jansen (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf)
FESTIVAL
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, November 25–27, 2021
with contributions by: Taslima Ahmed, Bice Curiger, Raphael Hefti, Camille Henrot, Alexander Kluge, Doreen Mende, Magnus Schäfer, students of the class of Marxt, formerly Odenbach, and others