Polke & Co. We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries. “Documentation of an exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle”

Finissage of the exhibition in three parts “Sigmar Polke. We Petty Bourgeois!
Comrades and Contemporaries”, 13th March 2009 – 17th January 2010

Sigmar Polke in his multilayered art – employing painting, drawing,
photography, and collage among other things – has been analysing contemporary
media societies. It is lesser known that since the late 1960s the artist has
persistently been producing films and videos which are adding up to a vast
audiovisual diary, an archive that is up to today largely unedited.

On occasion of the finissage of the exhibition in three parts “Sigmar Polke.
We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries” this one-day workshop will
screen selected rare examples of 16 mm-films dating from the 1970s. Footage
from Afghanistan and Sao Paulo as well as imagery from the context of the
Hamburg Art Academy Lerchenfeld was shot 1973-1979 while the artist was
working on well known large-scale photoworks. However, the emphasis of the
program is placed on Polke’s living environment: The subculture of Zurich
with its legendary figures “Looser” and “Lady Shiva” as well as the farm
Gaspelshof in Willich, an open house in the Lower Rhine region near
Düsseldorf, where the artist lived and worked with many friends. Additionally
videos by artist Ernst Mitzka will be on show that document appearances by
Polke & Co. Further films by Rebecca Horn and Klaus Mettig help to gain
insights into the according group dynamics.