ART CITIES:Paris-Daniel Richter
Daniel Richter’s paintings are both thematically and formally related to German Expressionism and painters such as Max Beckmann and George Grosz, who in the years before WW II painted acerbic, humorous and profoundly socially critical, allegorical pictures. Daniel Richter takes a similar approach to painting, which according to him is always ideologically positioned in relation to the surrounding world.
By Efi Mihalarou
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac presents an exhibition of a new series of works by Daniel Richter entitled “Le Freak”, which continues the “Hello, I love you” series, shown in 2015. The figurative elements of the paintings, which appear to be pornographic, are dissolving into Abstraction. They take a both provocative and whimsical direction to delve into the absurd and strange, notably through a reversal of his own motifs. Daniel Richter arrived on the art scene in the 1990s with a highly expressive abstract formal idiom that evoked associations with his earliest artistic career as a designer of for instance album covers for a number of punk rock bands in Germany of the 1980s. His early works are characterized by graffity-like features as much in the form and colors as in their titles, features which provide them with a certain kind of urgency. Up until 1999 Daniel Richter had been marketed as one of the greatest representatives of the New Abstraction. From the end of the 90’s, however, isolated figurative markers started to emerge in his works, in the shape of distorted features. Since the years around the turn of the century, the artist has exclusively painted figurative pictures, often described by himself, as a kind of new history painting. But they lack any reproduction of the specific historical events, the pictures rather capture a particular contemporary spirit, marked by the death of the great political utopias. Daniel Richter’s “Encounter in the Hinterland” (2011) is typical of his nightmarish and hallucinations scenarios that are rooted in the global news media. Here the artist hybridizes the abstract and the figurative, with a threatening scenario of conflicting narratives. The red figures look like they are being spied through the lens of an infrared camera. Lines reminiscent of topographic patterning cloak the seemingly endless mountains in the background emphasizing the environment and its inhabitant’s alien nature. In 2015, in his new works Richter breaks with all that seemed familiar in his painting and explored the question: “How can a picture be reduced formally while being charged at the same time as regards content?” In his search for answers and solutions Richter developed a new pictorial language which defies the customary motifs and painting methods as well as the familiar colors and themes. His works are stylistic complex and versatile. Richter says: “In the process of painting and thinking it is always this ‘change’ which is interesting. The result, the finished picture, is always only a milestone on a longer journey”. Richter’s painting against his own routine has resulted in fascinating works which not only reveal a transformation, but also a remarkable new development stage in the artist’s oeuvre.
Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 rue Debelleyme, Paris, Duration: 22/6-29/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.ropac.net
