Sigmar Polke Plakate

Axel Ciesielski is an enthusiastic collector of the works of Sigmar Polke and probably the only person in the world able to call all of the artist’s editions his own. They are currently on show in Siegen at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst and, from spring 2014, at les Abattoirs in Toulouse. Axel Ciesielski’s intensive collecting is of course founded on a well-grounded collection of numerous drawings and works on canvas, including early ones, but it has always encompassed the posters for the exhibitions as well. The present volume accordingly reproduces for the first time all the posters produced to date for exhibitions of works by Sigmar Polke – posters that are almost without exception governed by an ironic gaze pointing to the anarchic wit and the formally innovative world of works of this extraordinary artist. Yet what is special about this poster collection, writes Claus von der Osten, editor of the catalogue raisonné of the editions, in his introductory text, is above all that the collector has secured in impeccable quality all those posters that the artist himself included in the catalogue raisonné of the editions as artist’s posters. Beyond this, the volume is also a journey through time in the art world since the 1960s. Leafing through it, one quickly sees where and by whom Polke’s beginnings were accompanied and where presentations were repeatedly staged later on, but also which great institutional (retrospective) surveys promoted and reflected the artist’s worldwide fame. The volume is therefore a Who’s Who of contemporary art, whether presented by galleries, Kunstvereine or museums of international standing. In the process, not only the familiar but also enigmatic motifs from the artist’s work were and are employed, which makes this volume a cross-section through the various facets of the oeuvre.