Do You Enjoy the Work of Gerhard Richter?

Cage Grid II, Part C - Gerhard Richter (2011) - Artsy.com

This morning I received an email from a website titled Artsy.  I was not familiar with the site but it is dedicated to art collecting and education about artists giving people a way to see a very broad sample of work as well as bios, articles and exhibition information.

One of their sites is dedicated to one of my favorite artist, Gerhard Richter and I was very impressed with the depth and scoop of his work represented there.

Here is a link: https://www.artsy.net/artist/gerhard-richter

I wrote about my interest in Richter's work here at Studio 24-7 June of 2010:
http://studio24-7.blogspot.com/2010/06/inspiration-gerhard-richter.html 

Thanks for stopping by Studio 24-7.

Washed Peas and Carrots

My last post featured "failed" fabrics which I reprocessed using leftover dye and print paste. Here are the results.

The picture at the top features two of the pieces which I plan to use together. My biggest surprise was the one on the right. Check out the previous article and you will see that it appeared that the design was going to merge and by a black mass but it washed out beautifully.

When washed there is good detail.

This is the bottom edge and it is one of my favorite surprises. I love the way it fades out.

Detail of Left Side.

Gerhart Richter Inspiration Fabric

I am not excited about how this looks. It is a small piece of fabric but I may work on it some more. I also have a final piece I am working on from the original Inspiration fabric but I hope to enter it in a show which requires not publishing your work previously so I'll have to save that to show you later.

Last but not least are the two pieces that are bilaterally symmetrical. If you recall I painted the one on the right and then took a print from it with the fabric on the left.

The areas that didn't print are really interesting. Makes the fabric look cracked and worn.

Well I am signing off for a couple of weeks as I make my trip to Germany to see Color Improvisations. I'll be back around July 20 something. I hope you have enjoyed this article and will come back again later in the month.

I appreciate your visiting with me and love hearing your comments.

Gerhard Richter Inspiration: Stage Two

Stage Two - 28" H x 25.5" W

Deconstructed Printing, Monoprint, Stitched

This is my third posting relating to work inspired by Gerhard Richter. I began by monoprinting a 45" x 45" piece of fabric which has been cut in a number of pieces and I am making new work from that and incorporating additional fabric. My use of the idea of "Stage One" and "Stage Two" references the ongoing use of the original fabric.

In "Stage One" the fabric was presented in relation to a very dramatic fabric with heavy black painting and I used intense stitching on the "Richter" fabric to emphasis shapes and colors. For "Stage Two" I am using a larger cut of the fabric and I have combined it with a light fabric with a rough spiral design. The second fabric was made using the Deconstructed Printing process. This relationship is more unified in that it is more likely to be read as one rectangle rather than a diptych. The surface of the work is very active but feels light and the many layers of dye and dye markings are emphasized by the stitching.

I choose to quilt the left side with straight line stitching and the right side with organic free-motion stitching. I wanted to acknowledge the differences in the two fabrics but still keep the stitching "in the background" and allow the surface and color be the most important of the composition.

Detail 1 Stage Two

Free-motion quilting with multiple colors of thread.

Detail 2 Stage Two

Straight-line stitched with off-white thread.

Due to the slightly larger size of this piece, I have decided to use a facing rather than frame the work as I plan to do for Stage One. I have begun to add the facing but as I look at the image as presented here, I may go back and alter the composition by removing a couple of inches from the top. It just doesn't look comfortable yet. I'll let you know if I do that.

I still have more of the Richter inspired fabric so there is more to come. If you haven't visited his website please do. It is wonderful work.

Thank you for visiting and I love hearing from you.

Richter Inspiration: Stage One

Richter Inspiration: Stage One

26.5" w x 16.5"h

Richter Inspiration: Stage One is the first in a group of works I plan to make from fabric I monoprinted and presented in my last article.

During the past year I have made many small works within a 12" to 14" square format. The original piece of fabric I started with here was 15" square. I considered some of the ideas I had for taking the piece forward and decided that since I liked the markings on this piece I wanted to enhance it with very intense stitching and pair it with another piece of fabric that would have very high contrast .

I liked the feeling of the shapes on the both sides which seemed to to rising upward. On the right they appear to be landforms and on the left they are more cloud-like. It appears to be a universe where the sky is to the side rather than overhead.....I felt a rectangular format for each side would reinforce this feeling so I added a panel onto my original cut of fabric and cut the right side to match.

Detail of stitching

Detail of stitching.

I sorted through some of my fabrics and found a piece which had been hand dyed in several colors and painted with black dye. This fabric alone was not a standout but I knew that eventually I would find where it belonged.

Detail of right side of diptych.

The color in the fabric is more intense than the above photo shows. I altered the composition of the marks by adding two swatches which were applied with raw-edge applique.

Here you can clearly see the raw edge applique.

I am now ready to start Stage Two. While I feel the stitching on this piece is successful, I really loved the smooth face of the fabric before I stitched on Stage One. With that in mind, one of the things I plan not to do in the next piece is intense stitching. Everything else is still on the table.

Thank you for stopping by and please come again. I love hearing you.

INSPIRATION: GERHARD RICHTER

First Section - Terry Jarrard-Dimond - unfinished

Internationally know painter Gerhard Richter is a German born artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany. I have been aware of his work for some time and while looking through the March 2010 Art in America saw an ad for the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery who represented Richter's work at The Armory Show - Modern this year.

The advertisement featured a detail of a work entitled Abstraktes Bild. The richness of color, texture and layering is a visual feast. I am not showing that work as I do not have permission to do so AND I want to encourage you to visit his website: http://www.gerhard-richter.com/

Here you will find extensive information on this visionary and enormously productive artist along with wonderful videos of some exhibitions. Look at the range of sizes of the work from massive to very small. Enjoy the galleries as they are huge. It's fun because you can hear what it sounds like to be in the spaces and the commentator is very good.

After several days of studying the image in the magazine I decided to monoprint a piece of fabric and use the colors and general layout of the work. Of course there is the issue of opacity which dye does not have but serves painters very nicely. I have seen flickers of the illusion of opacity with dye on fabric but certainly can not intentionally reproduce that lush surface at will.

Layer One - It appears green but it is an intense yellow.

Layer Two - Fuschia

Layer Two - Detail

Layer Three - Intense Blue

Layer Three - Detail

Full View of Fabric

The color of photograph is not just right but you can see the general idea. Rather than do anything with the piece as a whole, I decided to cut the piece up and try to do something a little different with each piece. One of the things I found of interest when I looked at the Richter videos was a small series of painting on glass where he presented each work in relation to a second slightly different work. I often work in a diptych format so I may try to find or create a companion for each section that I have cut.

Another example of a section.

In the coming weeks I will share the results of this process here at Studio 24-7.

Thank you for dropping by and please feel free to comment. I love hearing from you.