Gerhard Richter, one of the best-known and most sought-after living painters, has made the theme of the disappearance of the image a hallmark of his work and laid the foundation for the next generation of artists.

Richter, one of the pioneers in depicting the dissolution of both the motif and the medium, paints over original pictures or uses a blurred painting technique. He deliberately selects trivial or random motifs as the starting point for his paintings. Well aware of the power of images,

Richter strives to break or at least question their authority by making his pictures merge or disappear. He plays with reality and appearance and converts figurative images into abstract ones by focusing, for example, on fragmentary details. He pioneered the use of existing images as the basis of his paintings, primarily as a means of transferring the characteristics of one medium to another, and for placing different genres on an equal footing. Through his entire body of work, Richter addresses the difference between subjective perception and the objective experience of reality in which the artist can only offer possible approaches to address the difficult relationship between the object and its representation. The video also continues this theme, showing out-of-focus portraits and silhouettes of his friend Volker Bradke.

Meanwhile Richter remains true to the medium of painting, yet questions its possibilities against a backdrop of the “end of painting” declared by Duchamp. The other seven artists take as their theme the absence (and sometimes impossibility) of making a clear statement by means of a picture today.

-Gerhard Richter at the CCCS in Florence-

Sue Bond