Daniel Richter - Furor I

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale.

21 October—20 November 2021
Thaddaeus Ropac
Paris Marais
7, rue Debelleyme
75003 Paris

Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais presents Furor I, an exhibition of German artist Daniel Richter’s latest series of vibrant large-scale oil paintings. Daniel Richter’s
works bring together diverse threads from art history, mass media, politics, sex and contemporary culture into ever-changing pictorial realms. In this exhibition,
the interplay of swift lines, vibrant blocks of colour and areas of negative space convey unprecedented movement, tension, and even fury, as the title suggests,
evoking bodily violence and transformation and calling into question systems of figurative representation and propaganda.

In this new series, the artist’s shifting figures flicker in and out of view, seeming to unite human and non-human elements through the combination of separate,
soft-edged, multicoloured patches applied with a palette knife, and stark contours in well-defined graphic strokes of oil crayon. The artist paints the colour fields first before outlining the composition, allowing his directed use of colour to structure the work, rather than the line. There is a sense of dynamism in Daniel Richter’s metamorphosing bodies; the multipartite nature of his compositions and the divisions between their internal elements giving the impression of ongoing bodily disintegration and reconstitution. About his work, #danielrichter says ‘it’s more a question of systems of representation rather than portraying the body as a carnal, biological thing.’

These new works are more sparse than in previous years, with #danielrichter even leaving large expanses of his canvases empty. He uses the space between patches
of colour, as well as outlines that gradually dissolve and open up as the figures shift from left to right, to express the movement and transformation of soldier-like figures all marching in the same direction. As they transition from one picture plane and one state of being to the next, they seem to leak out of their contours, evoking a post-human world in which beings exist at a transhumanistic juncture between person, animal, and formless colour field. Gilles Deleuze described Francis Bacon’s contours as ‘membranes’ through which material and figure flow, writing ‘The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.’ The same could be said for Daniel Richter’s loosening, dissolving outlines as they open to release monstrous extensions to his human figures.

Further information in the press release to download

- Fotogallery (18)