Untitled 2019

Curator: Looking at this drawing, I immediately feel uneasy, maybe even threatened. The figure's crude rendering almost amplifies its menacing character. Editor: Indeed. We have here an "Untitled" piece, created in 2019 by Thomas Riesner. It is crafted using ink and graphite on paper. Seeing its gestural abstraction, figuration and expressionistic handling of materials, I would say this work wrestles with what it means to present anti-art sentiment through visual representation. Curator: Anti-art, yes, in the way it shatters any expectation of beauty or harmony. The dripping red ink against stark black evokes viscera, something primal and raw. It feels almost like a scream on paper, particularly given its resemblance to Edvard Munch's work. Do you see an association to expressionism? Editor: It shares expressionism's tendency toward emotional intensity and distortion, certainly. But it simultaneously rejects that history of expressionism while remaining rooted in that formal approach. In our contemporary moment, such aesthetic violence speaks to something more. I read in its grotesque rendering, in its awkward limbs and gaping maw, the contemporary sociopolitical trauma impacting artistic vision. I consider Judith Butler’s discussions of precarity—the artist illustrates here how people and forms live on the edge. Curator: And its creation during 2019 gives it another, unintended historical layer, right? Given that our experiences changed dramatically a few months later with the onset of COVID. It's as though the image foreshadows the unraveling of our perceived safety and stability. It captures, however unconsciously, a profound societal anxiety. Editor: Precisely! Further, it demonstrates art’s capacity to bear witness—not just to what has happened, but what is currently happening, and potentially, what may occur. This is achieved on the conceptual level, even with crude strokes. Curator: I find the lack of any concrete background strangely effective as well. The figure floats in this white void. Perhaps suggesting feelings of abandonment? It becomes universal rather than individualistic. Editor: That suspension further emphasizes its fragility, as though it’s lost and searching within larger power systems. I wonder where such figuration goes from here in contemporary artistic expression? Curator: This is certainly a piece that stays with you, stirring up uncomfortable questions about how we present the grotesque—perhaps, for ourselves as well as others. It seems, ultimately, to challenge what can be shown within accepted parameters. Editor: I completely concur; through the distorted lens of trauma and its expression, new artistic and social paradigms have possibilities to arise.