Petra Polli

Petra Polli – BLAZE

At the Carte Blanche #6 exhibition BLAZE Petra Polli is showing latest works along some sculptures and paintings from the last years to give an extensive overview of her body of work. Petra Polli mainly gets inspired by different topics and situations she finds in the public space. The artist transforms these inspirations into her artworks and tries to leave traces and signs throughout her works. She creates illusions like in the Trompe-l’œil paintings using different layers, scraping off parts and overwriting. The richness in expression of the paintings is visible as the spectator moves closer and tries to decode the underlying message. Petra Polli works as well with concrete to form various sculptures some shown at the exhibition in the Hotel Aurora premises. The artist is experimenting a lot with different materials and recently has discovered light as a medium to express her thoughts and feelings. Since her studies in Leipzig, Petra Polli has been researching, experimenting and was meanly influenced by graffiti art in public spaces. In the series of works shown at Carte Blanche #6 the artworks at first glance look like photographs of urban walls on which anonymous sprayers have left their traces. The illusion stems from the fact that Polli builds up her paintings in a process of layering, scraping, overwriting comparable to sprayer art. The palimpsest-like overlays and overpaintings on urban walls are fascinating because of their inherent expressive richness and their undomesticated underground character.

The tags with which sprayers mark their territory are messages that are only understood by the initiated. They are exceedingly present in public space and at the same time elude into mystery. At the same time, the signs of the city refer painterly or sculptural when designed in concrete – as abstract, independent elements. With these objects Polli introduces a different level of presence of quotations of linguistic elements in her work.

The transition to dealing with writings, or more precisely with graffiti, began in 2009, when Petra Polli created acrylic paintings on canvas that at first glance seem to be taken directly from urban reality: from walls on which signs and writings of different provenance condense and sometimes overlap. Nevertheless, what Petra Polli does is a very conscious form of painting. In analogy to the confusing condensations of signs and the crumbling walls on which Polli often finds her subjects, she works on her canvases by applying different layers, washing out or scratching off parts, re-applying and re-erasing, so that finally several pictorial levels are present at the same time. Like an archaeologist, Polli presents the viewer with situations in which different tags compete with each other or with substrates that have been processed in different ways.

Tags are sign-like abbreviations that stand for names and began to spread in New York at the end of the 1960s. able by everyone, but are based on a code that is initially only understandable to insiders. In the beginning, it was about underground evidence of the existence and demarcation of territories on the part of individuals. In this respect, Petra Polli’s pictures have a lot to do with the big city and with the very specific forms of communication at work in it. Polli transfers her fascination for these underground signs un- embellished onto the canvas and confronts her viewers with them. Recently finished art works of light that represent the fluid digital Infrastructure we all are dealing and living with daily will be shown at the Hotel´s own club Sketch and at the ground floor entrance of the hotel. The commissioned work of light is part of the series of works called virtual traces and plays with the architecture, the structure and texture of the underground floor of the Aurora Hotel. Polli likes to play with the soft bendable light tubes of LED lighting and is referring to the transformation and constant changes we are all facing every day. The underlying chance of every transformation is hope and with hope Petra Polli want to leave a sign to everybody.

This space is dedicated to showcasing contemporary artistic perspectives, offering both local and international artists the opportunity to exhibit their work through a hybrid format: an online virtual gallery alongside a physical exhibition space located within Aurora.