Monumental in scale, arresting in the sheer multiplicity of chromatic incident, Abstraktes Bild, Dunkel (613-2) explodes in a fiery spectrum of chroma, its rhythmic jolts ricocheting in hurtling waves of refracting light across its vast expanse. A summation of Gerhard Richter‘s incontrovertible centrality to the history of Western art in the twentieth – and twenty-first – centuries, Dunkel displays a conceptual and material virtuosity unmatched in our time. The artist‘s traversal of all major stylistic and conceptual approaches to painting is on display, undertaken with the virtuosity and confidence of a towering master. A canvas of extreme density and dynamism, Dunkel extols the medium per se, but also reverberates with historical precedent. Mixing a variegated panoply of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors – gradient crimsons, golden yellows, verdant greens, hot vermilions, and cerulean blues – these chromatic fusions are punctuated by vertical striations, two of which, one centrally located, the other echoing at a close interval, darken the central expanse. Upon close examination(...)

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