Sigmar Polke
Photographs 1964 - 1990

As the title suggests, the exhibition provides an insight into Polke's cosmos as a photographer. At the same time, it is a tribute to the first museum retrospective of Sigmar Polke's photography in the U.S. – the exhibition tour »When Pictures Vanish« – that Paul Schimmel organized at the end of the 1990s and, of course, a tribute to the artist himself, who would have celebrated his 80th birthday in 2021.

The exhibition features 50 works – starting with the early everyday stagings, through complex photographic manipulations and overpaintings that characterize »Polkography«, to the later alchemical-experimental abstractions, »Polkochemistry«. Among the highlights of the exhibition is the 10-part work »Übermalung eines Bildes – Winterlandschaft«, a sequence that clearly reveals the multifaceted nature of his photography.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue with a text by Prof. Siegfried Gohr and seven interviews with contemporary witnesses.