Graphics in K21
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In a room with Gerhard Richter
February 1, 2020 (2), March 28, 2020, Graphics © Gerhard Richter 2021, K21 installation view, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2021.
Photo: K21 / Achim Kukulies
Düsseldorf K21 shows the powerful “Birkenau” course of Gerhard Richter. The show has its own room with existing graphics. They have a special charm.
This room has a special attraction. There are some people who entered several times to see the photos collected inside. It can be found on the second floor of K21, in the middle of the three rooms in which the museum displays the “Birkenau” cycle by Gerhard Richter. There are small scale drawings, some of which are only a few months old.
The majority of the package consists of black and white works. Sharp lines, which sometimes seem to be scratched into the paper with wires of pencils of different hardness, tear open spaces. They select, sort, and rearrange the region. They also serve as containers for gray and black mist clouds. None of them reached beyond the border lines. It’s like a map. About scanning an unknown, possibly imaginary area.
“At first we didn’t even know that Gerhard Richter would be showing the drawings,” says Susan Gensheimer, head of the art group. She arranged the exhibition of the cycle “Birkenau” with the 89-year-old girl. He came towards the house. Richter chose the works, the last created in July 2021, and designed the implementation with his wife, artist Sabine Moretz.
About two years ago, an interview was widely reported in which Gerhard Richter was courting not to draw anymore. “At some point, that’s just the end,” he said at the time. Some immediately interpreted this as a farewell to art. misunderstanding. “He reduced the size of the plate a lot,” Gaensheimer says. “What he does a lot is drawing. He experiments a lot and also brings up subjects that were of interest to him in drawing.” “You can imagine how he works there. The drawings are very personal. These works can give access to it.”
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Image for drawing April 14, 2020 (5) , Image for drawing April 14, 2020 (6), photo for drawing © Gerhard Richter 2021, Installation view K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2021.
Photo: K21 / Achim Kukulies
Indeed, one would think that he is approaching the artist in this room. In your mind’s eye you can see it skimming, hatching, and wiping. On some leaves, black flows together in puddles in abstract compositions. Sometimes, this reminds us of creatures from the underwater world: the gray-colored bodies of jellyfish are scattered through the white of the bottom.
The drawings have been part of Gerhard Richter’s artwork since 1964. They take the forms of abstract paintings, accompany and reflect them. In doing so, Richter always reflects on the tradition and medium of painting itself. The look and design is more planned and considered in the case of large formats, which sometimes run randomly.
Richter uses color on a few papers that will be presented in Düsseldorf. Colored pencils, he seems to have used them to work on corrugated surfaces. One sometimes thinks of the Rorschach tests, then the colored toothpicks that are fitted into grids and held in place with a gentle but nervous motion.
Perhaps the charm of these works lies in the fact that they do not claim to be ingenious, not even finished. There is something article about it. Have fun trying, in detail, thinking. It’s strange: you look at it with increasing focus. You try to understand it, and precisely because you cannot find any explanation, you delve deeply into the structures.
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