The interplay of swift lines, vibrant blocks of colour and areas of negative space convey unprecedented movement, tension, and even fury, as the title suggests, evoking bodily violence and transformation and calling into question systems of figurative representation and propaganda. (Galleries Now, 2021)

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Here the artist’s figures flicker in and out of view, seeming to unite human and non-human elements through the combination of separate, soft-edged, multicoloured patches applied with a palette knife, and stark contours in well-defined graphic strokes of oil crayon. Richter paints the colour fields first before outlining the composition, allowing his directed use of colour to structure the work, rather than the line. The metamorphosing bodies reflect dynamism and the divisions between their internal elements give the impression of ongoing bodily disintegration and reconstitution. These new works are more sparse than in previous years and even leave large expanses of his canvases empty. He uses the space between patches of colour, as well as outlines that gradually dissolve and open up as the figures shift from left to right, to express the movement and transformation of soldier-like figures all marching in the same direction. (Galleries Now, 2021)

Gilles Deleuze described Francis Bacon’s contours as ‘membranes’ through which material and figure flow, writing ‘The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.’

The same could be said for Daniel Richter’s loosening, dissolving outlines as they open to release monstrous extensions to his human figures. In Furor I, the artist’s palette of ripe, cloying colours evokes both the sensuality and vibrancy of the living body and an aggressive, uncomfortable artificiality. As Daniel Richter said in conversation with Poul Erik Tojner for the catalogue of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, in 2016, the straight lines he employs ‘shape this fake horizon as in a “sublime” landscape painting’, creating distorted, unsettling variations on the notion of horizon in painting in a way that recalls disorientating augmented reality backgrounds. Through his constant questioning of the place of painting in contemporary society, Daniel Richter seeks to bring contradictions to light. ‘It is hard to escape history and tradition, especially in something as conservative as painting,’ says the artist, ‘I work with all these contradictions.’ (Galleries Now, 2021)