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Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch’s (b. 1960) paintings are characterized by their distinctive combination of figurative imagery and surrealist abstraction. His enigmatic compositions employ an eccentric iconography of human characters, animals, and hybrid forms within familiar-looking but imaginary settings. While Rauch begins each work without a preconceived idea of the finished result, there is a uniquely recognizable, visual coherence to his oeuvre.

DUO , Oil on canvas, 11.75” x 15.75”, 2014

33 Paintings often display palettes of strong, complementary colors, and recurrent subjects include the seamless integration of organic and non-organic elements as well as references to the creative process, music, and manual labor. The artist’s treatment of scale is deliberately arbitrary and non-perspectival, and often seems to allude to different time zones or planes of existence. Rauch was born in 1960 in Leipzig, where he continues to live and work, and studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. Since 2000, Rauch’s work has been represented by David Zwirner. His 2019 solo exhibition Propaganda, on view at the gallery’s Hong Kong location, marks the artist’s eighth gallery presentation and his first solo presentation in China. Previous solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York include At the Well (2014), Heilstätten (2011), Neo Rauch (2008), Renegaten (2005), Neo Rauch (2002), and Neo Rauch (2000), which marked his United States debut. Rauch’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions international ly. Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

‘‘These are, at best, finger exercises, which I complete in a trancelike state.’’

Neo Rauch – Works from 2008 to 2019 will be on view at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence from October 16, 2019 through January 12, 2020. In 2019, Neo Rauch: Aus dem Boden was presented at Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, and traveled to The Drawing Center, New York. In 2013, BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels presented a solo show of the artist’s work entitled Neo Rauch: The Obses sion of the Demiurge. Selected Works 1993-2012 and in 2010 his first major museum survey was co-hosted by the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig and the Pinakothek der Mod erne, Munich. A version of this survey was shown at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw in 2011.

Javier Callej a

Finds That Magic Moment

“..Nara’s distinctively simple aesthetic has had an evident impact on the style and content of Calleja’s own artwork..’’

Málaga, 1971 Acid and optimist, big and small, obvious or cryptic, infantile or adult, the work of Javier Calleja develops from contrasts, which are copulative and disjunctive, and not completely resolved. The artist from Malaga has developed a creative project where the distortions of scale, the mixture of supports (mainly sculpture, drawing and painting), and site-specific work are combined in a particular world indebted to the child reader of comics that survives in it. In addition to the comics, pop art and a surrealism of Magritte origin both influence the work of Javier Calleja. Author of installations and mural paintings in which he plays with the idea of artwork within the artwork, the artist invites the viewer to form part of playful scenes, to relate to his cubic-headed characters and to interact by participating in his ironies or by reacting to the disproportionate sizes that evoke the worlds of Alice.