Daniel Richter's paintings are elaborate in their deconstruction and recodification of art history. Drawing a wide range of reference from Goya, Munch, Ensor, to Immendorff and Doig, Richter offers a revisionist position for the crisis of painting in the 21st century.Richter's work is often read with political motive. Working in the genre of epic historical painting, his images are fraught with a painterly anxiety. His work is infused with an apocalyptic energy, reflective of media induced paranoia. Beneath his highly seductive surfaces lies the portent of instability, violence, alienation and ideological subversion of a contemporary world in constant flux.Taking his subjects from pictures found in newspapers, comics, album and book covers, Richter repositions contemporary media imagery in the form of theatrical tableaux that are fantastical and timeless.



Richter's canvases are imbued with an alchemic affinity for paint. Copious techniques and applications deceptively flaunt the process of making, yet remain elusive in their overwhelming complexity. Richter handles paint with an unwieldy passion: every colour in his controlled chaos retains its magnetic purity, he creates depth that seems to grow, like an organic force, from within the canvas.Richter uses paint on a canvas surface to conjure up illusions of time and space. Still has a certain Pre-Raphaelite quality, reminiscent of ghostly figures witnessing the drowning of Ophelia. Much like Doig, Richter gets to the heart of paint, capturing a magnetic vibrancy through texture, richness of colour and illusion of light. Richter designs an exuberant and luscious otherworld, made all the more believable by the invention of, and adherence to, his own rules of image-making.

Daniel Richter's Jawohl und Gomorrah possesses an operatic quality. Borrowing themes from both Christianity and German history, Richter constructs his contemporary scene with theatrical flair: his figures are staged in Baroque composition, their outlandish costumes and mask-like faces lend an element of surreal spectacle. The fervent emotion of grand drama is carried through Richter's frenetic style of painting: thick brushwork battles with translucent drizzles and impassioned smears; acid tones are electrified against the sombre ground. Reminiscent of Ensor's nightmarish crowds, Richter infuses this street scene with apocalyptic celebration.