Mathias Poledna

In the run-up to a major solo exhibition at Chicago’s Renaissance Society, Michael Bracewell considers the work of Mathias Poledna

The Biennale exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, has turned out to be something of a coup. He has compellingly followed through his basic idea of submerging him and us – via surrealism, spiritualist abstraction, ‘outsider art’, popular culture – into the phantasmagorical unconscious and the primordial of 20th century art (and its digital counterpart of the 21st).

Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, USA