Neo Rauch continues to be one of the most fascinating and powerful figurative painters working in the world today. After getting the chance to interview the German artist in the newest Spring 2019 issue of Juxtapoz, the myth of the man became clearer, and his important and evolving output reminded us of what a great storyteller Rauch is. His newest body of work, Propaganda, opens at David Zwirner, Hong Kong on March 26th, just as Basel Week kicks off.
The Propaganda show coincides and is a precursor to the exhibition Rauch will have at the Drawing Center in NYC, opening. April 12, 2019. That show, Neo Rauch: Aus demBoden/From the Floor is the first exhibition in the United States to focus on the artist’s works on paper.
For Zwirner, "Propaganda introduces fifteen new paintings by Rauch—eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works—that continue the artist’s exploration of figuration, dreamlike imagery, and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art, while also suggesting new directions in his practice. Notably, while Rauch regularly depicts his figures and structures in overlapping spaces and configurations, in some of the larger works, such as Luz (2018), the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and surrealistic forms rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements has a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of the artist’s personal iconography. The works also testify to the range of ways Rauch applies color in his art. Several paintings use a highly restricted palette, while others contain an expansive array of colors. One canvas, Der Aufschneider (2018), featuring a figure who appears to hold a knife or saber and cuts at an eel-like creature or form, is rendered almost entirely in rose and amaranth shades of red with complementary green highlights. Sperre (2018), by contrast, which portrays a woman holding small flags assaulting or attacking a shirtless hybrid human figure against a bucolic backdrop, appears as though largely drained of color with select incidents of yellow and aquamarine. He renders figures and structures in plush earth tones in Die Herrin (2018)—a work that depicts a group of figures huddled around and attending to an inanimate female figure—while adding highlights of electric pink, yellow, and orange, creating a dynamic tension between more traditional painterly tones and colors that call to mind street art and electric signs."
A catalouge will accompany this exhibition, published by David Zwirner Books
