I was looking into the work of the German artist Sigmar Polke earier this week. If you’re not familiar with his work, you can find some images and links at the Tate Modern’s website.
When I first looked at the work of Polke, I felt suddenly joyful – like finding a friend. I loved it straight away that Polke was so much concerned with the properties of his materials. He was an artist-alchemist – someone who was able to tolerate and work with the unpredictable and indeterminate.
In this watchtower painting from 1985, Polke used photosensitive chemicals to make the image of a military watchtower. According to an expert called Martin Henschel (speaking at a talk which is recorded as an audio file on the Tate website), the photo chemicals cause the image to be unstable, changing and darkening over time, and sensitive to atmosphere and light.
What else? Polke goes straight towards trauma and pain, not avoiding it. In this case, this is one of a series of huge paintings made in the mid 1980’s of the watchtowers and state surveillance systems of his divided country (Germany). What is Polke doing? He shows us the open wounds, the realities. And he asks us to sit with them in ambiguity, uncertainty. And he shows us metamorphosis. Polke finds transformative possibilities, exactly in the places where it hurts. This is why I’ve been drawn back to looking at his work. I feel like I could learn about hope and freedom from Sigmar Polke.
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