NEO RAUCH

Neo Rauch at the Met: para
May 22, 2007–October 14, 2007
The Gioconda and Joseph King Gallery, Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, Modern Art
On view are new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the Leipzig artist Neo Rauch, one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. Shaped by the experience of growing up in East Germany, Rauch’s paintings teeter between Surrealism and popular imagery and defy easy interpretation. Viewers are drawn into scenes replete with historical figures in ambiguous landscapes. With a distinctive palette of bright acidic colors contrasting with deep shadows, the artist’s paintings conjure up an atmosphere of confused nostalgia and failed utopias.

Neo Rauch at the Met: para presents eleven new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through September 23, 2007 —is the third in the Museum’s series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.

Shaped by the experience of growing up in East Germany, Rauch’s paintings teeter between Surrealism and popular imagery, defying easy interpretation. Viewers are drawn into scenes replete with strange beings and ambiguous landscapes. Full of activity yet mysteriously static in feeling, Rauch’s paintings are fantasy painted as fact, and many of his large-format works are populated by figures that are connected spatially, yet remain alienated and unaware of each other. With a distinctive palette of bright acidic colors contrasting with deep shadows, the artist’s paintings conjure up an atmosphere of confused nostalgia and failed utopias.

Rauch has said, “For me, painting means the continuation of a dream with other means.” The artist is inspired by misplaced memories and momentary perceptions that are lost before they can be named. In this vein, Rauch has titled his exhibition at the Met para. Although there are many familiar elements in the parallel world of Rauch’s paintings, the situations depicted are bizarre and the normal is mixed freely with the abnormal.

Trained at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Rauch continues to live and work in the city of his birth, and has inspired a younger generation of painters in Leipzig’s thriving artistic community. Rauch’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2006); Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Canada (2006); Albertina, Vienna, Austria (2004); Saint Louis Art Museum (2003); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (2001), among other museums.

Neo Rauch at the Met: para is organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. After its presentation at the Met, the exhibition will travel to the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl, Germany in October 2007. On the occasion of the exhibition, DuMont publishers (Cologne, Germany) will release a related publication that will include 12 color illustrations and an essay by Werner Spies.