Gerhard Richter — Peinture 2010-2011 — Marian Goodman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 23 → November 3, 2011

Marian Goodman gallery presents two new series of paintings and a sculpture by Gerhard Richter.

The sculpture 6 Standing Glass Panes is made of 6 parallel glass panels assembled in a steel structure. Gerhard Richter first used glass in 1967 in 4 Panes of Glass. This material has become important in his work and, since 2002, the artist has created a series of three dimensions glass constructions, similar to the one presented at the gallery. These works refer to the idea of painting as a window onto the world, or as a mirror reflecting all that is in front. These two aspects appear metaphorically and visually in 6 Standing Glass Panes. By reflecting both the space of the gallery and the visitors the work oscillates between architecture and painting.

The first series of paintings, Perizade (2010), was created by pouring liquid paint freely on glass plates. Here the material of the paint is present and the forms undulate, providing a contrast to the big digital prints entitled Strip (2011), which are composed of a rigorous system of parallel lines. Nevertheless, the point of departure for the Strips is a painting, created by the artist in 1990: Abstract Painting (724-4). With the help of software he divided this work vertically, first in 2, then in 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096. This process led to the creation of 8190 strips, all of the same height as the original painting. At each stage of division the strips got thinner. They are mirrored and repeated which results in patterns. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. These works exhibited here are unique prints chosen and combined from different strips.

As Benjamin H.D. Buchloh writes:

“The status of painting in these new works is figured as exceptionally fragile, yet it is powerfully formulated in its assimilation to its technological challenges, as though painting was once again on the wane under the impact of technological innovations. Yet in its application of almost Duchampian strategies of fusing technology and extremely refined critical pictorial reflection, Richter’s astonishing new works open a new horizon of questions. These might concern the present functions of any pictorial project that does not want to operate in regression to painting’s past, but that wants to confront the destruction of painterly experiences with the very practice of painting as radical opposition to technology’s totalizing claims, and as manifest act of mourning the losses painting is served under the aegis of digital culture”.

A catalogue with a text by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.