“Violence and love, like obsession and submission, are close bedfellows, and then there is also the furor—the rage,” says curator Eva Meyer-Hermann of Daniel Richter’s latest batch of abstract paintings.
Now on view at Los Angeles’ Regen Projects, Furor II is an exercise in repetition, transformation, and metamorphosis. Using an original 1916 postcard of two wounded WWI soldiers as his sole source material, the German artist explores new avenues of color, form, and texture for each painting in Furor II. Through repetition, Daniel transforms his source material into complex, often joyful, compositions that oscillate between abstraction and figuration.
Using bold colors and gestural mark-making, Daniel transforms human figures into steam shovels, distended teardrops, shattered rib cages, even butterflies. Sharp lines jut across patchy color-blocking, like horizon lines in competition, while the outlines of witnesses and onlookers take shape in the foreground. Unsettling yet ultimately playful, Richter’s newest paintings address social, political, and historical issues, while the frenetic furor of his process results in open-ended compositions that defy categorization.
“The motifs in Daniel Richter’s latest works—distantly reminiscent of human figures—do not signify specific people or events,” says Eva Meyer-Hermann. “[But] their dancing, their wrestling, their attacks on others are like any form of human resistance to an overwhelming force.”
Furor II is on view at Regen Projects through December 23, 2022, and marks Daniel’s fifth solo show at the gallery. For more information, please visit the gallery’s website here.
“Violence and love, like obsession and submission, are close bedfellows, and then there is also the furor—the rage.” — Eva Meyer-Hermann, curator
Regen Projects: Website | Instagram
All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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