GERHARD RICHTER CONTINUOUSLY GENERATES NEW VISUAL SCENARIOS THAT INTERSECT IN THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE DESIRE FOR PRODUCTION AND THE POWER AND SEQUENCE OF IMAGES, OR THAT SEEP FROM THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL. IN THIS IMAGINARY REALM, WHICH INITIALLY MOVES BY ATTACHING ITSELF TO AN INTERNAL MESSAGE, IT IS POSSIBLE TO WITNESS IMPLICIT MEANINGS THAT BECOME ORDINARY OVER TIME, AND THE CONSEQUENCES DESTROYED BY INTENSIFICATIONS EXPERIENCED AT THE THRESHOLD OR BY AN INTUITIVE THINKING PRACTICE. THIS APPROACH IS ENTIRELY BASED ON THE STRONG MICRO-POLITICAL CONNECTIONS THAT RICHTER ESTABLISHES BETWEEN LIFE AND REALITY.R

ambiguous images where reality is displaced

Gerhard Richter’s 1988 Dead series, consisting of three paintings, is similarly the product of an ambiguous image aesthetic and this time examines death. Moreover, it attempts to present death by incorporating it into an unlimited algorithm of reality. The things that render the image of death uncanny confront us with a great void, silence, and heap of implications related to the indeterminacy of facial features, for instance. There is a concretization here that makes death felt more realistically and effectively. As if a cold layer of feeling that codes death and increasingly solidifies the threshold of perception has been activated. Consequently, as the signs belonging to death vanish, the representation becomes abstract and complex, carrying an emotional weight. The Dead paintings, cast into a cold aura, are therefore shaped by a new perceptual proposition that abstracts into faint particles with no return within motionless vibrations. And as clearly visible, these ambiguous and damaged images where reality is displaced accelerate the rhythm of vision, bringing the painting somewhat closer to a darker and more abstract plane.

In Betty, one of Richter’s extraordinary color paintings from photographic sources also dated 1988, a different and purer emotional transmission is witnessed. Subjectivized feelings envelop the familiar figure in all its dimensions, capturing it from the back and through the hair. In this frame, Richter focuses on the depiction of intimacy, pursuing an elegant emotionality that captures all the nuances of feminine being. With a spontaneous flow, he is in emotional fusion with the portrait. Representation, in this state, transcends its existing realism, going beyond a privileged visual phenomenon where formal relationships continuously acquire new dimensions. This is a transformation regarding the pictorial, legitimized only by authentic reality. Already, the transcendence in Richter is concealed in this image transformation as a stimulus of reality.

Gerhard Richter is essentially and continuously revealing new visual scenarios that intersect in the distance between the desire for production and the power and sequence of images, or that seep from the personal and political. In this imaginary realm, which initially moves by attaching itself to an internal message, it is possible to see implicit meanings that become ordinary over time, and sometimes the consequences destroyed by intensifications experienced at the threshold or by an intuitive thinking practice. This approach is entirely based on the strong micro-political connections that Richter establishes between life and reality.