“Half-Naked Truth” at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg Villa Kast is an exhibition of new works by the Berlin-based German painter Daniel Richter.The two groups of paintings were created in tandem over the past two years, and now after being shown at the Schirn Kunsthalle are on display for the first time in a non-institutional setting.Richter is best known for his highly expressive, vividly colorful, narrative pictorial scenes – idiosyncratic conflations of elements drawn from art history, mass media, and pop culture.Commenting on his work, Richter has said, “I don’t believe in technique. For me, painting is a form of thinking, and I keep control over the things required for this form of thinking,”The works in “Half-Naked Truth” signal a major development in Richter’s practice, from his previous fantastical figurative worlds to a style reminiscent of his earlier abstract works.According to the Schirn Kunsthalle, Richter has asked himself the question, “How can a picture be reduced formally while being charged at the same time as regards content?” His response is a new visual language characterized by its paradoxical fusion of ethereality and materiality, achieved by suspending “clearly defined color fields” in an “indeterminate space.”In “Half-Naked Truth,” Richter employs this boundary-busting pictorial language to explore the body and its nature, expressing what Ropac describes as “closeness and movement.”Richter explains, “Painting the pictures was a relatively long process, during which I was searching for a solution that interests me to problems that interest me. Then I took very simple decisions – for instance, not painting with a brush. I realized that when I'm using a brush – whether I hold it stiffly or limply, energetically or lightly – I am always driven to do what's familiar, and that's exactly what I wanted to avoid.“It's interesting to see how much this can be applied to various forms as a method rather than a style, and whether something new can emerge as a kind of commitment, between HOW and WHAT.”“Half-Naked Truth” is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg Villa Kast until March 12, 2016.
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