Confrontation No.671 1 1988

Gerhard Richter made this painting, Confrontation No.671 1, using oils to explore the theme of memory and representation. It’s one of many Confrontations, and to me, they are like looking at a ghost. The monochrome palette is heavy and muted, built with soft, smudged layers of grey paint that seem to dissolve the subject, a portrait, into abstraction. Look at how Richter blurs the lines, softening the features. It's a world of halftones, where definition is lost, and only a vague sense of form remains. You can almost feel him dragging the paint across the canvas. This isn't just about a face, but about how we perceive and remember images. Richter’s scraping technique blurs the boundaries between clarity and vagueness, between the real and the remembered. It reminds me of my own process; how meaning is always provisional, always in flux. Think of Francis Bacon, wrestling with similar themes of figuration and distortion, or how both artists use the act of painting to question the very nature of seeing.