Untitled 2019

Curator: Here we have Thomas Riesner's "Untitled" from 2019. It’s an ink and drawing, and the artist engages with both figuration and abstraction in the work. Editor: Whoa, unsettling but cool. Makes me think of raw nerves and exposed anxieties. The colours are kinda trippy, like a 3D movie without the glasses. Curator: Riesner’s use of line, the repetition and layering, speaks volumes. Note the process—the almost frenetic application of ink. You see the labour in it. Is it a reflection on modern anxieties about production? Editor: Or maybe the artist just had a bad day, needed to vent! I love how these figures feel both primal and futuristic. Like cave paintings done by robots. The way the ink bleeds...it's kind of beautiful and macabre at the same time. Does that make sense? Curator: Absolutely. The dripping ink undermines a controlled interpretation. There's a tangible messiness that forces you to reckon with its materiality, pushing beyond simple representational analysis to consider the work as a physical object. Editor: Right. You see how it was made, feel the energy that went into it. Almost violent but somehow playful, too, like a kid got hold of some really intense art supplies. Curator: Indeed, examining Riesner’s artistic decisions brings into focus how material manipulations—the deliberate drips, the colour choices—imbue the subject with affect. It transcends mere illustration; it is an emotionally loaded object, reflective perhaps, of cultural distress and a move towards non-representational mark-making. Editor: Looking at these figures now, I kinda feel a strange sort of kinship with them, y'know? Like they're just trying to figure things out, same as me. In their spooky little way. Curator: So, what have we learned? The labour shows on the surface, and the effect is affecting! Editor: Totally. Art can be weird, scary, beautiful, all at the same time. It doesn't need to make perfect sense to be, you know, perfectly brilliant.