Liquid image Udo Rathke

Udo Rathke, who did a mesmerizing screening last week as part of our row of summer screenings, will exhibit videopaintings, c-prints and drawings at Inter-Galerie, Potsdam from august 26th till october 7th.

"Udo Rathke’s work endeavors to reflect artistically on the inner and outer experience with nature in an abstract process, and to metaphorically increase its emotional substance...Completely constructed from color and made on irregular, found fragments of paper, his paintings refuse to depict any concrete or representational reference to an object... Inspired by the idyllic landscapes of Lorrain and Poussin, older works, in the compositional tectonics of their sensitively balanced concept of color, thoroughly create a pictorial harmony. This eventually fades, while the suggestive atmospheric value of the ever-unfolding landscape of color intensifies.


In the new work, the association of the landscape becomes more fleeting, less definite, the interest in composition decreases, as does any spatial indications and the flow of linear registrations becomes softer and more gestural. Limiting himself to a few, evenly distributed, rich nuances of color, above all blue - the color of desire, as such - produces an almost monochrome quality that works with grades of tonal values, like printmaking. In addition to works on paper that are austere and coolly bright, there are dark, mysterious works that are restrained, darkly over-painted, where memory seems to fade, and others that create a beguiling appeal of color - in this case, mostly an incredibly intense ultramarine....In a slow, endless flow of time, the painting process of layering the paint becomes a real metamorphosis that, in the use of the most modern technique, invokes natural processes of suggestive richness of atmosphere."
Ralf Weingart (full text here)




"Liquid Image" at Inter-Galerie, Nikolaisaal Potsdam
Wilhelm Staab Str. 10/11
august 26th till october 7th
opening august 25th, 8pm

shots from Udo Rathke (screening) & micronaut (guitar/samples) at Kunsthaus Meinblau, august 17th

related entries here and here