Neo Rauch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Neo Rauch was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1960. He is a contemporary painter who uses styles from the Social Realists, Pop, and the Surrealists movements. Rauch is also a well known international artist who is represented in New York by the David Zwirner gallery at 525 West 19^th Street. Currently, he has created a group of works for The Giaconda and Joseph King Gallery on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, titled “para”.

Para is a woman who has given birth to a number of children, or the children themselves. Rauch has specifically created all new paintings for this space, as if the title para references him in this act; the act of creation, of something like a child. The show in another setting may not have been as well received, but in the Metropolitan Museum, the show is stellar. The paintings are strikingly strange, yet somehow work in a confused mix of old and new iconography. Die Fuge / (The Gap) (2007) is the largest, which hangs outside of the smaller gallery and in the bigger, contemporary collection. Die Fuge has a strange sense of time where there are mythical human-creatures, old-style uniformed soldiers, and a woman with a double-vision head who has been misplaced from the forties. There is also modern architecture and contemporary graffiti on the building. Der Nachste Zug / (The Next Move /The Next Draw) (2007) shows an interior scene of men at a card game and a man and woman at the back table. Between the spaces, Rauch uses linearly abstract smoke lines, which hardly make sense. Yet, he pulls it off. They are the most abstract forms in the exhibit, as if Rauch can play with his paint and not loose sight of his imagination and story telling. The back wall and the floors also appear abstracted from his chosen use of textures. Next to the men at the card table, there is a shrine like structure that holds a book. Along the top of the shrine is the word, para. Once again Rauch is referencing his role as a creator. His socialist, East German background helps the viewer to understand that these creations are not narcissistic interpretations of himself. Instead, Rauch is creating a story, and perhaps telling a history that may or may not have existed. This is reminiscent of the formation of Germany as a country and it’s creation of a heritage with mythologies and heroines. It is difficult to tell if Rauch has chosen to use this historical reference as a commentary of his experience in Germany. One would assume that these contrasting governments made a great impact on him and these stories are how he makes sense of his culture and experiences. Another historical technique that Rauch uses is from Chinese history. Chinese scroll paintings used transitional spaces to tell narration and time. Warten auf die / (Waiting for the Barbarians (2007) is a prime example of this because of its landscape backgrounds and transitional space from mountains to war- ridden fields.

Neo Rauch’s new works are successful because of his use of transitional space, but also because he successfully references his culture while still managing to freak out the viewer a bit. It is appreciating to see rendered works that don’t have to be taken too seriously, yet can be contemplated as dialogue of contemporary German culture and their mix-match themes that Americans can so well relate to.