This exhibition presents Sigmar Polke's 1982 four-painting cycle The Dream of Menelaus,. At this point in his career, Polke returned to painting after a period of working with photography and film, and started experimenting with toxic minerals—aluminum, manganese, and ferrous mica—creating shifting, swirling surfaces evoking clouds or destruction. The title references Greek mythology: Menelaus, whose wife Helen was abducted, sparking the Trojan War. Rather than retelling the myth, Polke uses it to reflect on war and violence as enduring human concerns, drawing on his own experience of WWII.
