LOS ANGELES, CALIF.- Regen Projects is currently presenting Furor II, an exhibition of new paintings by German artist Daniel Richter. This marks the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery. The exhibition began on November 3rd, and will continue through December 23rd, 2022.
Richter came to prominence in the 1990s with bold, gestural, colorful, and even psychedelic abstract paintings that gained attention in the wake of Germany’s neo-expressionist Junge Wilde generation. Though he found early critical success with the riotous formal language of his abstract works, Richter has continually refused to settle into any single defining style. Steeped in the canon of German painting, Richter’s own work does not so much as undertake the projects of his forebears as it dissects and cannibalizes them in his pursuit of new meaning. Toward the beginning of the aughts, influenced by Symbolists like Pierre Bonnard and James Ensor, Richter would embrace figuration, deriving his subjects from contemporary media images found in newspapers and magazines in an endeavor to develop a form of contemporary history painting.
Over the last several years, the artist has taken to a process that prioritizes the gestural qualities of painting and the possibilities of the medium itself. Employing a variety of painterly techniques that fragment the figurative with emotive gestures, these bold new canvases serve as an inquiry into the very nature of painting and the process by which images are multiplied and consumed. Whereas Richter’s earlier works drew from multiple sources to form an allegory, his latest developments explore all the possible permutations that can derive from a single source using differing forms, color palettes, and textures.
Furor II continues Richter’s exploration into this iterative process. Here, a postcard from 1916 depicting two wounded WWI soldiers serves as one in a limited set of germinal reference images for these paintings. The postcard, once produced for mass commercial distribution and consumption, becomes the departure point from which Richter considers the atrophying effects of repetition on meaning, context, and feeling. Through such repetition, Richter transforms his source images into complex, paradoxically joyful compositions that oscillate between abstraction and figuration. Human figures metamorphose into forms resembling steam shovels, distended teardrops, shattered ribcages, even butterflies. Sharp lines jut across patchy color-blocked backgrounds, hinting at competing horizons, while the outlines of witnesses and onlookers take shape in the foreground. Unsettling yet ultimately playful, Richter’s newest paintings address social, political, and historical issues, while the frenetic furor of his process results in open-ended compositions that defy categorization.
“The motifs in Daniel Richter’s latest works—distantly reminiscent of human figures—do not signify specific people or events but have been freely painted as the bodies of painting. Their dancing, their wrestling, their attacks on others are like any form of human resistance to an overwhelming force. Violence and love, like obsession and submission, are close bedfellows, and then there is also the furor—the rage—that comes across in the way Daniel Richter voices his convictions.”
— Eva Meyer-Hermann, “Chiaroscuro,” from Daniel Richter: Limbo (2022)
Daniel Richter (b. 1962, Eutin, Germany) studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg under Werner Büttner from 1992 – 1996, and later worked as an assistant to Albert Oehlen. From 2004 – 2006 he served as Professor for Painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Since 2006, he has been teaching at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna.
Richter was recently the subject of two solo exhibitions—Limbo, curated by Eva Meyer-Hermann, Museo Ateneo Veneto, Venice, and My Lunatic Neighbar, Space K, Seoul. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and two-person exhibitions worldwide, including im Atelier Liebermann: Daniel Richter/Jack Bilbo, Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin (2017); Lonely Old Slogans, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (traveled to 21er Haus, Vienna and Camden Arts Centre, London) (2017); Hello, I love you, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); 10001 nacht, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2011); A Major Survey, Denver Art Museum (2009); Hamburger Kunsthalle (traveled to Gemeentenmuseum, The Hague and CAC Málaga) (2007–2008); Huntergrund, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2006); Pink Flag—White Horse, The Power Plant, Toronto (traveled to National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) (2004); Grünspan, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2002); Billard um halb Zehn, Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2001); and Für Immer (Tal R and Daniel Richter), Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2000).
Work by the artist is included in prominent museum collections internationally, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Denver Art Museum; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Kunsthalle Bonn; Kunsthalle zu Kiel; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
