Daniel Richter. Hello, I love you

The new series included two groups of works. In one of them Richter focuses on the obser­va­tion of the body and corpo­re­ality. In his previous works the human body was strongly contoured and always embedded in a super­or­di­nate narra­tive. Richter has retained the stereo­typed and flesh­less char­acter of the figures, but now goes further. His interest lies above all in the surface. He allows the forms to blur and thereby lets the figures dissolve. In this way a frag­mented, shat­tered phys­i­cality prevails. The figures are flat and inter­twined; the forms crash merci­lessly into each other and hint at the uncon­trolled human sexu­ality, which becomes visu­ally rein­forced in pornog­raphy. Richter devel­oped his latest works by starting out with the line and paint.

In his new works the line is not only a purely formal means of reduc­tion, but also the starting point for picto­rial design. At the same time it symbol­ises Richter’s ideas of picto­rial systems and schemes which help humans to compre­hend and to repre­sent picto­ri­ally the phenomena of reality. The latter becomes espe­cially clear in the other group of works. Based on diagrams with which data, content or infor­ma­tion are visu­alised, Richter paints amoeba-like areas on a subse­quently designed mono­chrome back­ground. The works recall maps or repre­sen­ta­tions of terri­to­rial bound­aries.

All the paint­ings in the new series impress with their mate­ri­ality. Richter dispenses almost entirely with painting with a paint­brush. Unlike his older works he shades all the colours he uses with white. With the excep­tion of the back­ground of the picture he uses only oil pastels for these new works. This leads to a funda­men­tally trans­formed appear­ance. Richter also avoids a clear symbolism and leaves no room for anec­dotal inter­pre­ta­tions. And yet his pictures reflect his powerful atti­tude to art and the world.