Unlike other artists who represent a movement as avatars of a formal or conceptual ideology, Polke has resisted these narrow definitions through an aggressive and relentless pursuit of the possibilities of materials and ideas. Rather than following the trends of the moment, Polke acts as initiator and flaneur, defining and embracing the historical and current legacies of abstraction, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism and appropriation. The radical originality of Polke's painting is that their images and media, while seeming to be common to mass produced objects, are like open texts that constantly create new meanings and effects in their relationships with each new spectator and each new space and time.