Gerhard Richter
Explores, Invents and Stuns in major exhibit at Met Breuer
Gerhard Richter: Painting After All is a major exhibition of the work of one of the greatest and most provocative and explorative artists of our time. The exhibit spans Richter’s six decades of his obsessive investigation of naturalism and at the opposite end of the art spectrum, abstraction. Gerhard Richter: Painting After All highlights two important, recent series by the artist: Birkenau for 2014 and Cage from 2006, both are exhibited in the United States for the first time.
Richter’s viewing of the only photographs taken by prisoners inside the Nazi concentration camp influenced him heavily and inspired the creation of the chilling yet humane Birkenau series. These paintings are done in a technically moving Richter style that creates a feeling of movement or the flicker of a life.
The Cage series is really a complete homage to John Cage, the American composer whose own compositions imitated nature in a very abstract way and Richter’s paintings are likewise meticulously multi-layered using chance as John Cage did in his work. Again we feel that flicker, that movement of nature, of life itself.
The exhibit comprises more than 100 works by Gerhard Richter including paintings, photographs, prints and sculpture and takes up two floors of the Met Breuer. Richter explores photography’s relationship to realism and memory and unlocks the possibilities of formal and conceptual painting. This is truly a monumental art event and one not to be missed. Gerhard Richter opens the mind to so many ideas and turns up our courage to be experimental and explore what is possible. The exhibit opens March 4th and runs through July 5th.
