18.4.88 1988

Curator: Here we have Gerhard Richter's "18.4.88," a watercolor created in 1988. My first impression? It feels surprisingly earthy, yet with this almost chemical luminosity in the yellows. Editor: Yes, a striking combination! Richter's use of watercolor is fascinating here, isn’t it? He pushes the medium's boundaries, using it in a way that seems to resist its inherent transparency. The paper itself must have played a role, its absorbency influencing how these pigments bled and interacted. Consider how industrial materials available at the time could change the outcome... Curator: Interesting point about industrial elements. But look at these yellow blobs—they remind me of alchemical symbols, or perhaps cellular structures viewed under a microscope. There’s a real sense of transformation here. Consider that date, 1988...What cultural touchstones are embedded? Editor: I wonder how much control Richter exerted over the outcome. Did he manipulate the flow, or did he mostly let the materials do their thing? Looking at the layered colors and their interaction on the paper, I would suspect it involves certain automatist processes which let go of the will and make a process in conversation with a nonhuman materiality. Curator: Yet those shapes, particularly at the top, also evoke landscapes, abstracted memories of fields or bodies of water perhaps. Maybe, more so, a meditation on his past and feelings in a post-war German consciousness grappling with identity? The layering contributes to this depth. Editor: It's intriguing to consider how something so ephemeral, created with water and pigment, can carry such weight. His careful registration of its moment of making indicates an intentional registration with the outside. The very act of fixing the title as a moment seems tied to a need for something real that also is being undone in process. Curator: Exactly. What seemed formless initially becomes more resonant and charged. He is almost pointing to the past and trying to make sense of that world and present-day life at once. Editor: And that intersection of control and chance—a true exploration of material potential within the artistic process! Curator: A captivating tension. The symbols transform into lived experience and cultural memory. Editor: It all begins, doesn't it, with our engagement with materiality? Fascinating.