VIENNA.- The question of how painting can react to the political, social, and media realities of today represents a starting point for Daniel Richter’s artistic work. For over two decades, he has radically challenged the potentialities of painting. Internationally, Richter is one of the most important painters of his generation, and of great importance for Vienna, not least because of his professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts. From February 3 to June 5, 2017, the 21er Haus puts forth the first comprehensive retrospective of the German painter in Vienna, entitled Lonely Old Slogans.

The retrospective surveys 52 works of Richter's development, from his early, colour-intensive abstract paintings to today. Following his large-format figurative sceneries of the '00s with their (art) historical, political and pop culture references, his new works are increasingly abstract and focused on explicitly raw human corporeality and political boundaries.

Daniel Richter's oeuvre is divided roughly into three periods. When the artist began to paint in the early 1990s, painting in Europe was experienced as an artistic medium of the past, largely approached with irony, distance and dissection. Richter was well-aware of these painting controversies and discourses, but instead of adopting a defensive attitude, he approached the genre directly, with an abundance of expressive forms, colours, and painterly methods.

At the turn of the century he counterposed his dense, abstract-ornamental paintings from the mid-1990s, with large, figurative and narrative images depicting socio-political realities. They are arranged theatrically and tell stories about the contradictions of our time. These works turned Richter into a famous and celebrated figure amongst the younger generation of German painters at the time. It is this body from his second creative phase that forms the core of the exhibition.

A characteristic feature of the painter is the way he mixes different stylistic and compositional elements into a highly ambivalent scenario that resists a single interpretation. With his recent work, Richter partially returned to abstraction. Starting with pornographic images, the artist has developed a new pictorial language and, in a very reduced, almost choreographic form, he seems to exhaust the potentialities of painting. Reminiscent of American Abstract Expressionism, his works of art are transformative both in a socio-political and body politic sense.

Daniel Richter is a politically motivated painter, not only because of his origins in the autonomous left-wing punk scene in Hamburg or his choice of subject matter, but particularly because of the attention and the critical gaze which he asks of his audience. The image titles – the Lonely Old Slogans – make it simultaneously easier and more difficult for the viewer. Sometimes they seem to precisely describe what is happening, while in other cases they position themselves in Dadaist fashion, at the edge of the intelligible. Thus, Richter's pictures burst open their inherent framework of meaning and point outwards. They withstand being held to any concrete historical events, but rather try to capture a certain spirit of the present, which is characterized by the disappearance of the great political utopias.

“Thanks to an excellent cooperation with the Lousiana Museum of Modern Art and the Camden Arts Centre, the 21er Haus will be able to present a comprehensive Daniel Richter retrospective in Vienna. The painter, who teaches in Vienna, has been reflecting upon and visualizing societal and art historical questions for over twenty years. His latest works have made visible a transformation, and are a remarkable development within the artist's oeuvre”, says Stella Rollig, General Director of the Belvedere and 21er Haus.

Curator Axel Köhne added: “Richter's painting reacts to and questions not only our constantly changing reality, but also the history of art itself. For example, his new topographical-abstract works show a radicalism that can hardly be matched to any historical references. His permanent exploration of boundaries and possibilities upon the canvas make Richter's work so autonomous and unique”.

The exhibition is organized by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, in collaboration with the 21er Haus, Wien, and the Camden Arts Centre, London.