Polke Post 28 - Atemkristall (Breath Crystal). An encounter with Sigmar Polke's painting from 1997

A life-size stick figure with clouds of breath unfurling in front of its mouth floats in front of a background of splashing puddles of paint and cloudy patches of red pigment. Sigmar Polke’s painting Atemkristall (Breathcrystal) from 1997 is currently on display at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin as part of the exhibition Sigmar Polke: Der heimische Waldboden (Sigmar Polke: The Native Forest Floor), and we are once again fascinated by the playful way in which Polke makes different materials and painting techniques as well as spatial and temporal dimensions interact with each other. 
 
The motif comes from Polke’s early artistic archive: he drew the figure himself as a child. Decades later, using his signature raster technique, he painted an enormously enlarged version of the image, dot by dot, onto a thin, semitransparent fabric with a parquet pattern through which glimpses of the stretcher frame can be seen. He borrowed the title from a poem by the Jewish author Paul Celan (1920, Czernivtsi–1970, Paris).
 
Sigmar Polke’s works are often made up of a number of different layers that interact and overlap with each other, opening up new levels of meaning in their unusual combinations.  

Like a child whose own breath suddenly appears before them in the cold, we are delighted when—as in this (re-)encounter with a work of art—we discover new inspiration that sends our thinking in an unexpected direction. As an institution for research into Polke’s work, we often receive these kinds of ideas and are more than happy to share them with everyone.  
 
We would like to thank everyone who has joined us on our journey of discovery and who has assisted and supported our work. We wish you all happy holidays and a relaxing break, as well as health, happiness, and plenty of new food for thought in the new year!
 
Anna Polke & the Anna Polke Foundation team
Kathrin Barutzki, Nelly Gawellek, Silke Röckelein, Nicole Ruppert and Sophia Stang