(born in Dresden in 1932)
Ifrit, signed, dated on the reverse Richter 2010, inscribed “zu 915”, with signed and dated (10.2.11) dedication, lacquer behind glass on Alu-Dibond, 29.8 x 29.8 cm, (PS)

Watch Video: Contemporary Art | November 2015 | Austrian and German Artists

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
- directly from the artist

Certificate:
Hubertus Butin, Berlin 3.9.2015

The work is the proof for the series of “Ifrit”.

Richter introduced a significant vibrantly colourful cycle of works – the reverse glass painting series – in which the moment of depiction assumes a new guise. The artist revived a brighter range of abstract works he produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and so the cycle of reverse glass paintings represents a multifaceted, joyous investigation of colour and abstraction.

Sindbad [CR: 905], the first in the series of works, was produced in 2008. The title alludes to the story of Sindbad the Sailor from Arabian Nights. The related series’ of paintings, Bagdad, Ifrit, Persisade, Aladdin and Abdallah that followed in 2009 and 2010, show that the Middle East was frequently in the mind of the artist at the time. The piece was produced during the preparations for the work cycle Aladdin [CR: 913, 915], and the title Ifrit refers to the number in Richter’s catalogue raisonné. It stands as a good example of these cycles, and clearly illustrates Richter’s determined rejection of traditional parameters applied elsewhere in painting.
The panes of glass appear like experimental or scientific specimens that engender an intensely critical appraisal of appearance and perception, image planes, depth, space, form, colour and light: associations with a broad variety of dimensions are brought to life here, from microscopic images through to geological and cosmological phenomena. The meandering lines and the forms spreading like blisters do not appear fashioned: instead, similar to the patterns found on stones or other manifestations of nature, they seem given. The pieces reflect a touch of the original and prehistoric. These associations are created by Richter’s new technique of reversing the image carrier and how the colours are introduced:
The paints are applied to their base indirectly, not directly. Initially, the colours were poured over a Plexiglas panel across which they proceeded to spread out, sometimes more, sometimes less. Richter used a brush and spatula, occasionally lifting alternate sides of the panel to manipulate the course and the mixture of colours. Then he interrupted the process to preserve a certain state in one of the particular sections. To do this, he placed a pane of glass onto the congealing paint as an image carrier. No matter how many layers had formed, only the upper remained visible, thus introducing an almost photographic fixation of the moment in place of the customary process of artistic design, hence making the colourfully petrified structures more difficult to decrypt:
The side facing out towards the onlookers remains flat and smooth, so the material consistency of the paint surface, whether rough or smooth, flat or congealed, can only be grasped indirectly. In truth, the process that the themes and materials undergo in the inherently self-defined emergence is automated and detached from the aesthetic idea that the unconscious perception of the subject brings forth.