Thomas Bayrle

A pioneer of German Pop Art, Thomas Bayrle is best known for his ‘super-forms’, large images composed of iterations of smaller cell-like images. Humorous, satirical, and often political, his paintings, sculptures, and digital images are commentaries on the systems of control and domination in a rapidly globalizing economy, via allegorical references to traffic patterns, mass production, and the generic designs of popular goods such as wrappers and wallpaper. Bayrle draws readily on his experience of Cold War Germany as a microcosm of broader power struggles. $ (1980) is among Bayrle’s most recognizable works: a sculptural wall relief of a dollar sign-shaped cardboard motorway littered with plastic vehicles, meticulously painted and arranged in line with the colored squares on Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-3).