Vater 2007

This painting, called Vater, by Neo Rauch, is just dripping with a kind of surreal, theatrical light. The color palette here is all muted earth tones and then BAM, a saturated yellow that just pops right out, almost like a spotlight. I’m drawn to the way Rauch handles paint. It's like he's building up layers of atmosphere. There's this tension between the flatness of the surface and the illusion of depth, he’s not afraid to let the paint be itself. Look at the figure being held, how it contrasts to the figure holding it. This contrast is really interesting, especially with that raw, almost exposed quality. Rauch always seems to be wrestling with history and memory, in a way that reminds me of Polke. It's like he's saying, "Art doesn't have to be one thing." And I love that about him.