Der Laden 2005

Neo Rauch made 'Der Laden', which translates as 'The Shop', with oil on canvas, and what strikes me first is how the color feels both lurid and murky, like a memory fighting its way through layers of dust and film. There's this push and pull between figuration and abstraction, the painting looks almost photo-real, but then you notice how the perspectives are skewed and the figures seem caught in a kind of time warp. It's like he's not just representing a scene, but also digging around in the process of memory, finding what looks real and what doesn’t. The paint application itself is quite smooth, almost like old school advertising art, but that smoothness belies the strangeness of the composition. The longer I look, the more the whole scene starts to feel dreamlike, a little unsettling. You know, this reminds me of some of the early work by Luc Tuymans, but with more of a narrative bent. And like Tuymans, Rauch isn't interested in giving us easy answers or a clear story, more a sense of ambiguity and unease.