Polke dots coat canvas

Those who have seen the exhibition “Sigmar Polke: Recent Paintings and Drawings,” presented at the Dallas Museum of Art since November 16, 2002 will understand the relationship between Sigmar Polke and dots.

Those who haven’t seen the exhibition will make sense of it when they face dots, dots and more dots, which characterize many of Polke’s works.

When searching for Polke in art books, it’s very likely to find him associated with the “capitalist realist movement” founded in Germany in the mid-1960s. But what does it mean?

Polke’s artwork is an informal but clear lecture on the movement characterized by the refusal to be bounded by the limits of a genre.

With painting and drawings that range from “pure” abstraction to canvases of sewn found fabrics, Polke illustrates the idea that there’s no imperative an artist must fit into. By mixing styles, he creates his own.

A piece such as “The Hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, 2002” goes against the “abstract painting” era, as the artist associates graphics with pictures and writing.

This immense printed image on fabric represents a satellite surveillance that renders targets illegible from the air.

By using already existing images from printed media and making them larger, Polke offers a new and perhaps ironic vision of popular culture past and present.

Polke uses dots as an art method to recreate images. They emphasize our sense of vision and perception because looking at those images from a close distance is like being in front of a large movie screen – the images appear to be an assemblage of dots as opposed to a unified composition. This provides an aspect of optical illusion.

Several other pieces present images of guns and gun owners and may make one think of Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine.

Polke decided to work on particular images, transforming and recomposing them by increasing their sizes.

Moore’s film has the same kind of effect. He suggests a gun control problem by overexposing violence in the United States. One of the pictures on which Polke worked is a photo of a man sitting behind a stand covered with a variety of guns.

In Bowling for Columbine, Moore interviews gun owners who end up having nothing and nobody to fear but themselves.

The two artists don’t explicitly criticize popular culture and its actors but expose facts and images that speak for themselves.

It’s possible to associate the dots with the gunshots, round like Polke’s patterns. And his patterns get converted into people, and people die because of gunshots.

One remarkable aspect of Polke’s works is that they suggest a variety of styles but come from the same particular interest in printed material.

It seems that Polke couldn’t exist without a machine that can print, without newspapers or magazines. In fact, he shows humanity in a different way, a new way.

The artist goes further than simply exposing gigantic canvases – he created them in such a way that, at close range, they become amazing abstract patterns composed of dots.

It’s impressive to see how he starts from concrete and found material and gives it all multi-dimensional value.

His pieces appeal to our sense of perception and make us receptive to issues involving the role of the media and consequently, the government. He also examines the effects of popular culture on society.

Depending on whether you look at Polke’s work from afar or from close range, you may perceive either abstract paintings or unified images.

“Sigmar Polke: Recent Paintings and Drawings” is a visual explanation of what is meant by “Capitalist Realism.”

Through his works, Polke explores various techniques and never limits himself to a single style.

Polke’s art is unique and engaging. His dots have a certain power over us – they disturb our sense of perception and make us question the culture in which we live.

The DMA will feature the exhibit until April 6.