Daniel Richter

About Daniel Richter and his art

Text written by Patricia Ellis

Daniel Richter's paintings are elaborate in their deconstruction and recodification of art history. Drawing a wide range of reference from Goya, Munch, Ensor, to Immendorff and Doig, Richter offers a revisionist position for the crisis of painting in the 21st century.

Richter's work is often read with political motive. Working in the genre of epic historical painting, his images are fraught with a painterly anxiety. His work is infused with an apocalyptic energy, reflective of media induced paranoia. Beneath his highly seductive surfaces lies the portent of instability, violence, alienation and ideological subversion of a contemporary world in constant flux.

Taking his subjects from pictures found in newspapers, comics, album and book covers, Richter repositions contemporary media imagery in the form of theatrical tableaux that are fantastical and timeless.

His nightmarish scenes are both terrifying and beautiful: rebellious mobs attacking the Berlin wall are staged with medieval religious zeal; gatherings of vagabonds glow with paranormal threat. Laden with the weight of implied history, Richter's scenes extend beyond emblematic reading; their narratives take on the qualities of magical realism, extending a shiver of supernatural barbarism to depictions of current affairs.

Richter's canvases are imbued with an alchemic affinity for paint. Copious techniques and applications deceptively flaunt the process of making, yet remain elusive in their overwhelming complexity. Richter handles paint with an unwieldy passion: every colour in his controlled chaos retains its magnetic purity, he creates depth that seems to grow, like an organic force, from within the canvas.

Richter's paintings radiate with their own internal light, bringing his dreamy scenes of contemporary fable to life with enduring authority.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/arti...