Forbes : Richter Ponders The Vanishing Point (by Tom Teicholz)

Gerhard Richter, David Zwirner Chelsea (March 16-April 29)

Gerhard Richter, one of the most important German painters of the post-WWII era is 91. A recent show at David Zwirner Gallery on 20th Street in New York, which closed this past weekend, was a vivid reminder of the painter's ongoing vitality.

Installation view, Gerhard Richter, David Zwirner, New York, March16-April 29, 2023 COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER

In 2017, Richter announced that he had stopped painting and the 14 canvases at Zwirner on 20th Street represent his last work made in 2016-2017.

However, he has not stopped making art, returning to his drawing practice. At Zwirner more than 70 recent drawings and inkjet prints were shown. By any measure, the paintings and drawings reflect a prodigious amount of work for an artist of any age. And they represent no diminution of talent or power.

First, the paintings. Their size varies, but they are deeply textured and worked over, displaying tremendous energy and an engagement with the textures of his work. In these abstract works you see his deep understanding of color and of paint itself. The striations he's created digging deep into the surfaces he's built up, create a rhythm in his work, almost like bars of music. The colors appear mixed on top and aside each other – some seeming random, some clearly intentional. If these are his last paintings then they are elegies expressive of the turmoil he has captured in his work, as he reckoned with Germany's and his own place in a post-Holocaust world.

Nonetheless, the works remain vessels for the alchemy of each viewer's projections and imaginations.

Installation view, Gerhard Richter, David Zwirner, New York, March 16-April 29, 2023 COURTESY OF DAVID ZWIRNER

Some of the paintings I found impenetrable. Others, particularly one of the large canvases at the end of the first viewing room made me imagine I was standing in a bog looking out to the River Styx itself. Buried within the abstract slashes, I imagined the head of the ferryman waiting there, a painting which to me, was a projection of Richter seeing Death on the horizon.

Richter has described his drawings as being complementary to his paintings like a poem and novel by the same author. At Zwirner there were several different series of drawings.

Gerhard Richter, 3 November 2021, 2021 COPYRIGHT: GERHARD RICHTER 2023 (16032023) COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND DAVID ZWIRNER

In the first series there was a purity of lines intersecting shapes –planes intersected at various angles—- beautiful abstract compositions, delicate, intelligent, purposeful, recalling some of the early 20th Century Russian Constructivist. Some of the drawings are made with ink, others with graphite.

Gerhard Richter. 21.9.22 (8), 2022 COPYRIGHT GERHARD RICHTER, 2023 (16032023) COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND DAVID ZWIRNER

Another series of drawings were compositions of cloud-like graphite and ink rubbings. Some of these triggered a recollection of similar forms I saw in my youth, images from concert "Light Shows" at The Fillmore East in New York's East Village, that featured amoeba like oil forms trapped between glass panes.

Finally, Richter exhibited a series of color inkjet prints (in editions of 8) called "Mood" that appear almost like a Rorschach test. There is a sense of play and spontaneity in these works. Whether they appear as happy or angry or just moody, it is evident that Richter enjoys making them.

No matter the form, Richter is still making Art.

Article published on https://www.forbes.com