a bit on richter...in hopes for his MIMA show.

Gerhard Richter's body of work elaborates an attempt to understand the world while remaining viscerally aware of the limitations inherent in such an attempt. From the magnitude of a bombed landscape to the insubstantiality of an atom, Richter approaches everything with the same impulse. In this regard, every representation is similar in its inability to represent. It is precisely this kind of consistency of approach that binds Richter’s work. An approach that makes seemingly unrelated subjects and techniques connect through equal parts credence and distrust. It is what could be called the acceptance of unequivocal doubt, what Rob Storr coined as a doubt and belief in painting. A simple dogma that is not one. Similarly connected to Derrida's logical fallacy.
Paradoxically, it is the suppression of ego (or the artist's hand) in Richter’s work that has seemed to, in effect, create his style. His signature is one of a universal nature. Richter says that abstraction is best suited to depict an ungraspable reality. While the number of possibilities within such abstractions is scary and exciting it also, he says, induces hope. Richter goes on to include representational paintings in this explanation. Richter contends that the less representational paintings function, the greater capacity they will have to fulfill such transcendence. For Storr, it is Richter’s apt negotiation between hope and skepticism that produces such effective, intangible results. The confrontation of the real and the abstract is what summarizes the artist’s methodology. Just as in his practice, Richter is able to combine the seemingly opposed discourses of representation and abstraction in a way that is more meaningful to both. Gerhard Richter has managed to, for the most part, maneuver his way out of categorization. At the same time, there is something incredibly distinct about his work, something very personal. It is the personal that evokes the universal, the restraint that summons the individuality, and the ambiguity of intent that lends itself to the function of art itself. It is precisely through that ambiguity, however, that Richter’s work achieves such poignant clarity. Richter, Gerhard, Ema (Nude on a Staircase) 1966, Oil on canvas 6' 6 3/4" x 51 3/16" (200 x 130 cm)
Museum Ludwig, Cologne