At the heart of the project is the experimental system that Polke developed for the Biennale pavilion, in which early modern hermeticism and modern photography overlap. His artistic practice combines photochemical knowledge with mineralogical studies to create a non-apparative imaging process that allows the environmental parameters of light, heat, and humidity to react with the painting surface. Through a precise analysis of the material foundations, formats, and images of the installation, as well as the photographic and film documentation, Polke’s work will be explored from an interdisciplinary perspective with regard to current questions about the representation of visible and invisible natural phenomena. Polke’s own positioning of his work in the history of photography offers starting points for more recent research in the history of photography, the history of science, and art. “The wall paints itself”—Polke’s motto, as recorded in the 1986 catalog—is a variation on a phrase coined by photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, whose book The Pencil of Nature described photosensitive recording as a self-image of nature.
Polke’s experimental practice in the 1986 Biennale Pavilion will serve as a springboard for updating the question of the relationship between visibility and invisibility in images against the backdrop of contemporary photographic practice. The event will take place parallel to the exhibitions in After Nature. Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize by C/O Berlin and the Crespo Foundation, which look at the relationship between photography and the capitalization of ecosystems from different perspectives. Here, nature no longer appears as an intrinsically untouched, mysterious, and creative force, but as a category that has fallen apart, requiring new ways of seeing, representing, and understanding. This reversal of perspective on nature and destruction situates Polke’s historical project in current social and political processes related to the climate crisis, where the creativity of both nature and culture is at stake.
A project initiated by Hans-Christian von Herrmann, TU Berlin, Institute of History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Literature, and Katja Müller-Helle, HU Berlin, Department for Art and Visual History, Research Centre 'Das Technische Bild'.