Sigmar Polke, Putti (Sie erleben heute im privaten Bereich zahlreiche Glucksmomente) (Putti (You Experience Countless Moments of Joy in Your Private Life Today)), 2007, acrylic and interference colour on canvas, Private Collection, Germany © The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne, DACS 2017
‘I like the way that the dots in a magnified picture swim and move about. The way that motifs change from recognisable to unrecognisable, the undecided, ambiguous nature of the situation, the way it remains open.’ Sigmar Polke
Oscillating in colour and playful in her elegance, evoking the graceful movement of a dancer, Tänzerin (Dancer) is an exceptional example of Sigmar Polke’s celebrated Rasterbilder (Raster paintings). Emblematic of the artist’s mastery of alchemy and experimentation with optical efects, Tänzerin serves as a rare and magisterial synthesis of Polke’s artistic explorations. At the locus of his experiments with alchemy, this exceptional work has remained within a private German collection since its execution in 1994 and has never before been seen outside this setting. Exemplary of Polke’s extensive analysis of aesthetics through materials and investigation into social and cultural models, the present work is a mirage of the artist’s creativity.
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Tänzerin is an exceptional rarity in Polke’s use of his most celebrated and iconic earlier technique of the hand-painted Raster and his prolifc experimentations with colour. Having been trained as a stained glass worker in his youth, the artist remained fascinated by transparency and translucency and the efects of light on perception. The luminosity of the present work, a rigorous and graceful illusion, exposes this fascination with light. Here, his use of interference colour is exemplary of his continued experimentation with chemicals and perfected technique of rigorously hand-painted specs. Embodying how Polke transcends the distinction between the abstract and the fgurative, Tänzerin is rare amidst his creative output of the 1990s. The elegant dancer, a perfected
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