15. Sept. ’98 1998

This is Gerhard Richter’s ‘15. Sept. ’98’, made with oil on a photograph. Richter lets the paint drip and drag, making these strange, tree-like forms in blues and browns that dance across the surface of the image. It’s like he's not just painting a picture, but staging an event. The surface has this real tension, this push and pull between the photographic image and the applied paint. The paint is both translucent and opaque, revealing and obscuring the image beneath. Look at how the paint pools at the bottom, almost like the reflections in the pond. It feels like a screen or a veil, asking us to look through it, to see beyond it. Richter reminds me of Sigmar Polke, with his playful experimentation and his willingness to embrace chance. Both artists were interested in the ways that images are made and how they shape our perception of the world, embracing the ambiguities and uncertainties of the artistic process.