Neo Rauch
Stille Reserve
3 May – 5 July 2025
Opening: Saturday, 3 May, 11am – 8pm
Spring tour and 20th anniversary of the SpinnereiGalleries
Saturday, 3 May, 11am – 8pm
Sunday, 4 May, 11am – 6pm
We are pleased to announce the solo exhibition Stille Reserve by Neo Rauch, opening on Saturday, May 3 and Sunday, May 4 as part of the anniversary tour of the SpinnereiGalleries at Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig.
Over the period of two months, recent works by the artist will be on display. A catalog with illustrations of the works and a conversation with Neo Rauch and Gerd Harry Lybke will be published by Lubok Verlag to accompany the exhibition.
Please find the details on the catalog, as well as a special tote bag edition and exhibition poster in occasion of the show in our Webshop.
Conversation between Neo Rauch and Gerd Harry Lybke
Leipzig, March 12, 2025
On occasion of the solo show „Stille Reserve“ at Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig, May 3 - July 5, 2025
Gerd Harry Lybke: Neo, we met in Leipzig in 1982. I was a model at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1989 and I also modeled for you. That’s a long time knowing each other to be having our first interview just now, but you have to start somewhere. The title of your exhibition is Stille Reserve – Hidden Reserves.
Neo Rauch: Hidden Reserves describe the state of a potential in the background that has not yet been fully exhausted. That has remained hidden, until now. And so one can ask oneself, is this exhibition already the revelation of this reserve, or is there another reserve beyond this presentation? I would tend towards the latter; there is another reserve, and there will be one every single time. It’s an ever-ongoing process, actually; the best is yet to come.
GHL: The visual worlds you make use of are also a parallel world to reality. I practically grew up with your paintings. Not as a child, but they have been with me for many years. I always have the feeling that they truly have a strong influence on me. You once said that your visual worlds create a magnetic bond with the viewer who is willing to engage with it. What would you say is the basis for this magnetic bond to the image, which I can also sense?
NR: For me, that would be the most desirable state: that a magnetism develops between the image and the viewer. I strive to construct, to enable a magnetism within the image which actually allows the image to become a condensed situation. Or, from this condensed state, the magnetism arises.
GHL: Sometimes I even think that the paintings—some of them have been on the easel for a year and a half, waiting to be finally finished—grow again in the last two weeks before you sign them. You have the composition, you see the colours, you see the placements, you have all these paintings in front of you and you don’t really know where you’re tweaking, but there are very specific areas that you revisit very clearly, and suddenly this magnetism emerges.
NR: These are the densifications which I’m pushing forward. Substance must be fed into the paintings. They must have dense zones, from which the magnetic effect then emerges. I’m glad that I spend days or weeks painting a picture, and only in the final stages do I achieve this state. Over all this time, I don’t really feel like I’ve accomplished much. The devil is in the details, as we all know, and these details then define and continually reestablish the relationship between them. And this is how the structure and the suggestive power emerge that should emanate from a painting.
GHL: The subconscious plays a major role in your work. Your characters could also be in a dream. But you manage to bring them to life on the canvas, so to speak; at least that’s where they take shape.
NR: Yes, they emerge under the brush, the characters, the physiognomies; these are what occupy me the most. I devote most of my time to the physiognomic features of my characters, and we all know that a millimeter can make the difference between banality and genius, and so I spend a long time fumbling and tweaking these heads, even to the point of decapitation and recreation, until the image, or the character that the image needs, sits on the respective shoulders.
GHL: Your visual work could also be read as a literary work. Are the figures in your paintings bound by a narrative flow? Do they reappear and disappear, like in a long novel?
NR: There is definitely a narrative intention. If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t use figurativism. And when I’m working on a cycle, it happens that the images, which coexist and develop alongside one another from a certain stage of completion onward, pass the ball to one another. There are revenants that move through the pictures. I’m usually only able to see this myself once the paintings are hanging on the wall in the exhibition. Then the commotion subsides, the suspended matter settles, and I have a clear view of what has been created. Under certain circumstances, one can suddenly perceive certain narrative structures which weren’t even in my sight when I painted them.
GHL: Is literature itself an influx for your paintings, or is it a form of leisure activity that you devote yourself to when you are intensively engaged with literature?
NR: I read constantly, but the images lead an existence of their own. They live a life that draws on sources beyond literature. It’s something that is perhaps occasionally touched by a literary ray of sunshine, and then a little plant sprouts. But it’s essentially something self-sufficient.
GHL: I can take up and read your images again and again, just like a large cycle of novels. It’s as if I keep my finger in the book, then look at a painting, then continue reading, and always have the bigger picture in mind. Each of your images is connected to the multitude of works you’ve created. There are no individual ones that exist on their own. Although each one stands alone, they always have a world to which they belong. That is the world you have created and continue to create. You are the creator. You once said that the picture paints itself from a certain moment on. Yes, definitely—but it always remains in the context of the other paintings.
NR: Yes, there is no attempt to escape from this context.
GHL: And why should there be?
NR: Yes, that could of course also be dangerous, that I’ve become too comfortable with my creations, but on the other hand, I also like to think in terms of security, and I like to surround myself with familiar things and familiar situations.
GHL: The individual paintings are also interdependent; they cling to each other like a family.
NR: That’s inevitable.
GHL: Of course, everyone in the family is different. Sometimes you don’t really like one uncle, but he’s part of it. And that, I think, is also a strength of this family.
NR: There’s even a colouristic kinship indicator here. It’s that predominant shade of violet. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that.
GHL: Yes, that’s interesting. When you see them together now, they belong together, but they also function on their own. You know you can send them out into the world.
NR: It would be bad if that weren’t the case, if they weren’t viable in and of themselves. That’s the premise under which I let a painting leave the studio. It has to be viable.
GHL: You also once said that they are your diplomats, your children.
NR: Yes, absolutely. Outside of their internal context, paintings must also convey a sensual message, not a mission, but they must simply work through the senses, not through the mind; they must send a signal that announces my existence. Here’s someone who’s doing something strange. That would be enough for me if word got around. And it has already gotten around to some extent. That’s what I actually expect from art. That someone appears who does something that no one else does.
GHL: I’d also be interested in your thoughts on time. Is it linear, a sequence of events from the past to the future, or do you have a different perspective or perception of time?
NR: My perception of time is, of course, multipolar. On the one hand, it tugs at me. I feel as if it’s pushing me through my existence. On the other hand, I also see the image that Rivarol suggested, who said that time is a silent urn through which the water of life flows. That’s a motif that invites meditation. If you can agree on it, then you see yourself as the water of life flowing through this silent urn. That doesn’t make it better in the end, but it does make it more beautiful. Then there’s also the idea that time doesn’t unfold linearly, but that things exist and happen simultaneously. That there is no yesterday and no tomorrow, but that from today onwards we could turn our gaze in all directions, which of course we don’t do, because we only ever display this bipolarity of forwards and backwards. But this last image appeals to me very much because it fits quite well into my workshop conditions and because it can represent a very good starting point for my work. That we move as if in the middle of an infinitely large carpet, whose ornamental structure develops in all directions, as seen from our perspective. The clairvoyant person is capable of taking an elevated position, which enables them to continue the ornamental structure. This allows them to anticipate certain processes.
GHL: This also reflects the fact that when looking at your paintings, one can take on different perspectives. Very close to the action, or fifteen meters above, or quite far away. Micro, macro—it’s all there at once; even past, present, and future could be found everywhere if one looks closely. It simply cannot be reduced to a single, direct reality.
NR: Perhaps the only thing I’m leaving out is the present.
GHL: Although the present also flows in, of course, leaving out the present also allows the viewer to enter into a relationship, because: The viewer is the present.
NR: Yes, the viewer is the present, or rather, I am the present. I am the executive organ of the ornamental inevitabilities that proliferate in all directions. And I am practically the eye in this storm of ornamentation.
GHL: The action in your images has either just been completed or is about to begin. The dynamics of the action are suspended in equilibrium.
NR: My ideal conception of the effectiveness or of how the paintings exist, how they carry on their being, would be that they are processes that unfold in slow motion. But that would mean at a speed of one millimeter per hundred years. Everything is arranged in such a way that entanglements and collisions can occur that are not present in the picture, but that are inherent in the potential of the painting. And we are witnessing a plot in which processes develop one after the other, but at an unimaginably slow pace. In any case, these events take place in a parallel world that we perceive as if through a thick Plexiglas window. And we cannot make contact with the actors, and they cannot make contact with us. That’s also important; you’ll very rarely be able to establish direct eye contact with the actors because they don’t perceive us, nor do they need us. And for me, that’s a hallmark of a good figurative painting, of any painting in general, that it doesn’t necessarily require the viewer. That it lives, that it drives its existence forward in silent agreement with itself and doesn’t prioritize this attention-seeking gesture.
GHL: When you begin a new work, which then takes one or two years, you probably often take the anchor position of the last painting at the beginning, fix the horizon, and thus draw yourself in, in order to then develop new possibilities from safe ground.
NR: There are certainly elements of routine in my work; it’s not at all free of them. I would be a hypocrite if I claimed there was no routine. But that’s something I have at my disposal in terms of experience, and I’d be a fool not to use it. When it comes to organizing such a large format, to create something within it that would also have a captivating effect on others, I use a toolbox that I’ve become quite comfortable and confident in.
GHL: I believe that people can identify more with such visual worlds than with a superficial bubble that predominates in the environment anyway. This otherness, in other words. I believe that no one in the world doesn’t feel different from others. Most people, no matter how, feel different from their counterparts.
NR: Many suffer from it. Young people in particular want to be like everyone else. There’s a certain tendency toward uniformity, or uniformed thinking, which is also reflected in their appearance. And if someone steps out of character, they’re considered an oddball, which is rather pejorative.
GHL: Yes, but that can also be helpful. Often, those who were labeled as oddballs had to go their own way from the start, which helped them. You’re not just part of it. And that’s the case with these characters in your paintings, too. They’re not just characters, they’re all oddballs.
NR: Yes, I hope so.
GHL: Not only in that they communicate with each other or not with each other, though not with the viewer, but also in themselves, as types. Oddballs among oddballs.
NR: Yes, of course. I also absolutely strive to develop characters in their physiognomy and habits that make a lasting impression on the viewer, that nestle in the viewer’s subconscious because they embody a certain quality that lies this side of caricature, but which nevertheless exhibits a certain accentuation. Under no circumstances should they appear standardized, appearing as stereotypical, die-cut forms of character corpses, but rather they should contain recognizable moments within themselves.
GHL: What kind of image do you see in your work when you look in the rearview mirror?
NR: The course of my artistic development has been a rollercoaster ride, how could it be otherwise, with, I hope, a steady upward trend. The peaks are getting higher, the valleys perhaps not necessarily deeper. And then, as far as I can tell when I look in the rearview mirror or over my shoulder, there are always things that I developed years ago that still cast a shadow over my current workshop situation and that constantly remind me. Here, behind you, lurks your fiercest competitor, which is you yourself. So there are ridges and plateaus where I once traveled, where I carried out my activities, which I can simply admire when I look over my shoulder. And then I ask myself whether I will continue to be granted such things. But there’s always hope, and we also want to keep our hidden reserves alive.
Translation by Hagen Hamm
