I Live In My Own World, But It’s Ok, They Know Me Here
The relationship between painting and reproducible media, such as photography and film, represents a longstanding theme in Polke’s practice. The source imagery for the enigmatic shapes at the center of I Live in My Own World, But It’s Ok, They Know Me Here pushes this conversation further, framing it in the context of an ongoing debate around the connection between vision and image-making to violence. Covered in a black and white pattern of diamond-shaped forms, at first glance, this large-scale painting appears entirely abstract. However, the nondescript black shapes near the center of the work are borrowed from a computer-generated diagram of two Taliban fighters on horseback published in a German magazine article on U.S. counterterrorism surveillance in Afghanistan. The broader diagram illustrates the process by which such an image would be captured and dispersed: photographed from the air by a drone and transmitted to a satellite, which transfers the image to a second satellite, which subsequently passes it along to U.S. counterterrorism centers around the world. I Live in My Own World offers a hyperbolically enlarged rendering of the drone’s long-distance vision of the horseback riders. In doing so, the digitized image, as well as the militarized information it purports to contain, appears to break down and disintegrate.
Artwork Details
- Title: I Live In My Own World, But It’s Ok, They Know Me Here
- Artist: Sigmar Polke (German, Olésnica (Oels) 1941–2010 Cologne)
- Date: 2002
- Medium: Mixed media on fabric
- Dimensions: 9 ft. 10 in. × 16 ft. 4 3/4 in. (299.7 × 499.7 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of Carlos M. de la Cruz, in memory of his wife, Rosa R. de la Cruz, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.621
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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