Polke Post 2 - Curator Dierk Stemmler on Sigmar Polke's Athanor installation at the 42nd Venice Biennale, 1986

In 2010, Stemmler spoke with Anna Polke about Polke's Athanor. We are pleased to quote from this conversation:

"The lacquer paintings were installed in the center of the main room. This installation was also remarkable in that it related to a mural in the conch, which, as we know, reacted to humidity. Using this type of reaction as a form of painting was, to my knowledge, new and attracted a great deal of attention from many experts. Because the lacquer paintings were huge and partially covered the passageways to one of the side rooms on the left and right, sequences of three rows were created, but at irregular intervals. As one moved toward the conch, a kind of arrhythmia was created, which was incredibly exciting. It was a fantastic choreography of painting in space. In addition, two sculptural details lent the whole thing a special accent. One was a meteorite on loan from the Ruhrlandmuseum in Essen, which acted like a magnet and triggered a sensation of moving forces. Sigmar chose the right corner of the pavilion to install a cinnabar stone. (...)

Incidentally, one of the characteristics of his art is, of course, its wonderful complexity. A wide variety of structures from different areas of the world interact with each other and also follow each other in an invented, inner reality, creating overlapping transparencies. In later years, Sigmar Polke spoke—for example, in a conversation with Rita Blumenthal about her multi-layered paintings on foil—about the problem of transparency as a possibility for regaining spatiality without having to draw perspective. This is remarkable. In this sense, a structural comparison takes place that occurs within the image and at the same time continues from image to image, as later cycles and groups of works testify. The oscillation between realities provokes speculation about discerning something figurative where it is not tangible, where it cannot be pinned down. Nevertheless, a world is present: a visual world that welds together the past, the present, utopia, and fiction. This is, of course, also the basic idea behind the Athanor, the alchemical melting furnace, in the installation at the Venice Biennale."

(Dierk Stemmler in conversation with Anna Polke, 2010, excerpt. The entire conversation is available in the archives of the Anna Polke Foundation).