Overview
Marian Goodman gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new works by Gerhard Richter. We will show two new series of paintings and a sculpture.
Gerhard Richter: Peinture 2010-2011
23 September - 3 November 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, 23 September, 6-8:30 pm
23 September - 3 November 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, 23 September, 6-8:30 pm
Marian Goodman gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new works by Gerhard Richter. The opening will take place on Friday 23rd September from 6 to 8:30 pm, in the presence of the artist. We will show two new series of paintings and a sculpture.
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 Strip 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.
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. Since the 1960’s he has produced a vast and complex body of work. His painting includes figurative as well as pure abstraction, emotional as well as formal. His figurative works often come from his own photographs of daily life. All the documentary sources of his work (newspaper clippings, photos, sketches…) are gathered in the encyclopedic work Atlas, constantly enriched and regularly exposed since 1972. He is considered by many art critics as one of the most important contemporary artists. His work has been exhibited internationally and he has received numerous prestigious awards. He participated in Documenta 7, 8, 9 et 10 and in the 36th, 40th, 47th, and 52nd Venice Biennales.
His next retrospective entitled Panorama is organized in conjunction with the Tate Modern, London (6 October 2011 – 8 January 2012), the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (12 February – 13 May 2012), and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (6 June – 24 September 2012). The touring exhibition Sinopsis / Survey was presented in 2009 in Bolivia and Chile, in 2010 in Argentina and Uruguay, and in 2011 in several cities in Brazil. His exhibitions in 2011 also include Sinbad at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York and Images of an Era at Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg. In 2010: Elbe at Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), and Lines which do not exist at the Drawing Center, New York. In 2009 : a retrospective at the Albertina, Vienna, Portaits at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Richter en France at Musée de Grenoble (France), Abstract Paintings at the Haus der Kunst, Munich. In 2002, the MOMA in New York presented the major exhibition 40 Years of Painting, which travelled to the Art Institute in Chicago, the SF MoMA in San Francisco, and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.
