Using images from the past, Neo Rauch creates complex environments representing visions of the present and future, which can be seen in the newly-opened exhibition of his work at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC).
The exhibition brings together eight monumental canvases which all date from the last four years. They feature disquieting compositions drawing on many sources of inspiration and employing a very unusual array of colours and shapes. “His references are numerous and varied,” explains Réal Lussier, the curator of the exhibition, “from Symbolism and Socialist Realism, to East German traditional illustrations, or even his childhood taste for comic books.” From this cacophony of influences emerges a striking style which recalls Surrealism and Pop Art amongst others, and whose possible interpretations are endless.
So while the exhibition seems small upon first entering the gallery which it occupies, the complexity and richness of Rauch’s paintings make this a very compelling introduction to an artist little known in
The brevity of the Rauch exhibition, rather than being a weakness, is one of its strengths. Because his canvases are so dense, saturated with meaning and interpretive potential, the eight paintings on display are just the right dose. Were an exhibition to feature any more than fifteen of Rauch’s works side by side the viewer would become immersed in symbols and suggestions to the point of drowning in their currents. This exhibition anticipates the attention span of the contemporary audience to which the paintings are so poignantly addressed.
The works themselves are extremely post-modern, crafting an absurd but accurate vision of the present and future using Rauch’s own palette of influences from the past. His canvases enact the collision of dissimilar spaces. For example a work entitled Gold includes a city diner, a river and a rural church side by side; or another painting by the name of Höhe (Altitude) brings together a mountain ridge, a supermarket and a piece of Modern architecture. This trend in Rauch’s work can be taken, on one reading, to suggest the decomposition of the physical world in favour of the virtual world of wireless telecommunications which we are experiencing.
As already mentioned, the themes and issues addressed in Rauch’s paintings are innumerable. However, several larger motifs reappear in more than one of the canvases presented at the MAC. For instance, the male anxiety caused by the increasing political and economic independence of women is evoked in at least three of the eight works. In the lower right-hand section of the painting entitled Lösung (Solution) for example, a man can be seen grovelling, possibly dying, at a woman’s feet while a large and phallic drill rests impotently against the wall beside them. However, images of misogyny and patriarchal domination can also be found in some of the same paintings. Thus in another section of the same painting Solution, the viewer is able to peer through the curtains of a suburban home to see the same man and woman in a struggle, the man with a sword hanging from his belt. This apparent contradiction, of which there are as many as one wants to find in Rauch’s work, is not an oversight on the artist’s part. Rather, it is an accurate representation of the conflicts and inconsistencies which are present in every aspect of our lives including, in this case, gender politics.
All this to say that in spite of the density of Rauch’s work it is not difficult to appreciate or enjoy. The endless levels of meaning embedded in his paintings make this exhibition a great introduction to a fascinating artist.
Note: This article was published on 25 September 2006 in the McGill Daily and can be found on that paper's website here.
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