Sigmar Polke - Untitled - image-1

Lot 633 D

Sigmar Polke - Untitled

Auction 1111 - overview Cologne
02.06.2018, 14:00 - Contemporary Art II
Estimate: 70.000 € - 90.000 €
Result: 68.200 € (incl. premium)

Sigmar Polke

Untitled
1998

Interference paint and acrylic on card. 100 x 68.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'Sigmar Polke 98' and with dedication. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

The relationship between light and colour is a central theme in Sigmar Polke's oeuvre, in which the artist repeatedly deals with new, partially very unusual materials. Polke began dedicating himself to interference colour in the 1990s and subsequently created numerous works in which the special aesthetics of the material are emphasised. Chance and non-controllability play an important role in this; Polke pours the paint directly onto the paper or the canvas and determines the course of the colour only to a certain extent by moving the support.
'Polke drove his materials to a point where reason stumbles and things begin to take shape - not through the artist's foresight or conscious action, but through non-rational conditions such as gravity, chance and the ability of association of the unconscious. No binary system was satisfactory, no ideology attractive, no geometry embodied divinity and no truth triumphed. Polke was obsessed with the use of chance to achieve less contrived and less sentimental forms of expression; he wanted to liberate his materials from his control in order to undermine effortlessness and to surpass what he already knew'. (Kathy Halbreich, Alibis, An Introduction, in: Kathy Halbreich et al. (Ed.), Alibis, Sigmar Polke, 1963-2013, exhib.cat. Museum Ludwig, Cologne i.a., Munich 2015, p.72).

Certificate

We would like to thank Michael Trier for helpful information.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Berlin