Moma
is spending almost its entire second floor to exhibit Sigmar Polke,
who is considered as one of the most experimental artists in the last
century. The show covers nearly five decades; the amount of works are
numerous; the medium widely varies, which includes painting, drawing,
printmaking, film, photography and film, among many others. If we only
talk about the body scale of the artists’ work, it has been really
impressive, which delivers a very clear message--this is one never be
tired of making new work.
The
works in the atrium give the audience the first impression, which
include a sculpture, several large scale paintings and a film. The large
scale work name “Season’s Hottest”(2013) is made by mixed fabrics on
wooden frame is a quite late piece in Polke’s career , which is totally
different from his early drawing works showed in the gallery next to the
atrium. This piece has totally abandoned brush, ink or other artistic
color materials which was frequently used by the artist; three kinds of
fabrics collage on a empty 300cm*500cm wooden frame, which create a
strong visual power, which is more about “less is more”, compared with
his many other painting pieces.
The
gallery behind the atrium shows drawings of his early time, mostly from
1960s and 1970s. There are several notebooks from different periods,
1965 to 1999. It is hard to say that the small water color drawings in
these notebooks are great art pieces, but for some reason I felt quite
enjoyed when I read them. These rough and visually unattractive drawings
record the moment when the artist’s experimental ideas were just born
in his mind, and also reflect how strong of the desire of creation the
artist has. Through these notebooks, the audience can even kind track
the thinking process of the artist: in the 1960s, the drawings are
simply sketches by ink and brush; in the 1980s, a notebook only contains
how a chair can be put on different position of a space; in the 1990s,
one notebooks was fully painted by different dotes. The curating of
displaying the original notebooks and digital images together also helps
the audience to get the full picture of these under-table ideas.
Mao Photo Source: Internet
Visiting
the rest galleries, it is really surprised to see how wide of different
media and subjects the artists has explored. In the gallery six, there
is synthetic polymer paint using the image of Mao from 1972, when Mao
was frequently in the news and pop-art works; on the wall of somewhere,
there is a collection of pink photography which is experiment by placing
radioactive uranium on photographic plate and further treating in the
printing process from 1990s, when the atomic energy had been the new hot
issue because of the Cold War; in the last room, the recent work
covers a four-channel slide projects from 2000, several enamel on
polyester works, and a digital slide show of the commission work for the
windows for the Grossmunster church in Zurich, which was the project he
worked until one year before death in 2010. In this project, he worked
with local stained-glass artisans, and stained-glass was right his major
when he was a young man before he went to art.
Making
a label type conclusion for the body of work by Sigmar Polke does not
really make sense. The numerous works in his whole life tells a fact:
just like one of his favorite materials --potato, if there is a little
sunny and water, the desire of creation just grows and blooms. All the
things around him, different materials, hot social matters, scientific
issues and many other things all became his nourishment. In terms of the
definitions and classifications, the panel discussion of Moma gave a
nice title “Who Cares if it’s painting.”
