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Sigmar Polke — Leave the Lab and Enter the Office
Sigmar Polke

Leave the Lab and Enter the Office

In this offset lithograph, Sigmar Polke employs his characteristically subversive and layered approach, printing in colors on both sides of translucent tracing paper to create a ghostly interplay of overlapping imagery and text. The translucency of the sheet allows the reverse-side printing to bleed through, producing a disorienting visual effect that blurs the boundary between front and back, figure and ground. True to Polke's conceptual wit, the work engages with themes of institutional transition and everyday absurdity, transforming a mundane directive into a meditation on systems of control and social order.

Medium
Offset lithograph in colors, on tracing paper printed on both sides, the full sheet.

🔨 Auction Lot

Editions & Works on Paper

October 17, 2017

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Spotted works by Sigmar Polke

About this work

Sigmar Polke, Leave the Lab and Enter the Office

In this offset lithograph, Sigmar Polke employs his characteristically subversive and layered approach, printing in colors on both sides of translucent tracing paper to create a ghostly interplay of overlapping imagery and text. The translucency of the sheet allows the reverse-side printing to bleed through, producing a disorienting visual effect that blurs the boundary between front and back, figure and ground. True to Polke's conceptual wit, the work engages with themes of institutional transition and everyday absurdity, transforming a mundane directive into a meditation on systems of control and social order.

Medium
Offset lithograph in colors, on tracing paper printed on both sides, the full sheet.
Seen at
Phillips, New York, London, Hong Kong

Related themes

Postmodernism, Print On Tracing Paper, German Artist, Postwar Artist, 20th Century, Institutional Critique, Double Sided Print, Offset Lithograph, Male Artist, Mixed Media, Conceptual Art, Printmaking, Contemporary Artist, Postwar Contemporary, Pop Art, Translucent Paper, Satirical Tone, Multicolor, Tracing Paper, Lithograph, Abstract, Text-Based Art, Satirical Mood

More works by Sigmar Polke

Collected by

Art Institute of Chicago