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Lot Essay
Helenas Australien is a compelling example of Sigmar Polke's interest in exploring non-traditional materials and pigments that characterizes his painting in the 1980s. The title references his global travels to places such as Australia, souvenirs of which are found in his paintings and photographic works. The medium, artificial resin and acrylic on synthetic fabric, is an example of Polke's continual investigation of different images and mediums to create radical new effects. Polke can best be described as a Post-Modern alchemist.
Helenas Australien is a large-scale work painted on a commercially produced material. A diagonal seam divides the canvas vertically into two color sections, a bright red and burnished sienna. The sections are unified by large splashes and drips of acrylic paint and artificial resin that create veil-like skeins on the fabric surface. The transparent effects have the aesthetic of glass painting, a medium Polke studied between 1959-1961 in Düsseldorf. The artificial resin creates marks that have an almost hallucinatory quality, simultaneously emerging and disappearing. Polke has noted the influence of Francis Picabia's late works, the Transparencies, where nearly transparent forms are juxtaposed through layering, their forms both revealed and obscured, their subjects often considered low-brow or kitsch.
Helenas Australien is a large-scale work painted on a commercially produced material. A diagonal seam divides the canvas vertically into two color sections, a bright red and burnished sienna. The sections are unified by large splashes and drips of acrylic paint and artificial resin that create veil-like skeins on the fabric surface. The transparent effects have the aesthetic of glass painting, a medium Polke studied between 1959-1961 in Düsseldorf. The artificial resin creates marks that have an almost hallucinatory quality, simultaneously emerging and disappearing. Polke has noted the influence of Francis Picabia's late works, the Transparencies, where nearly transparent forms are juxtaposed through layering, their forms both revealed and obscured, their subjects often considered low-brow or kitsch.