Neo Rauch

With collectors hanging about on waiting lists or literally queuing up to get their hands on his painting, and with critics keeping their fingers poised to drop in superlatives like "the hottest", "brightest", or "most interesting" painter working today, any show by Neo Rauch, the godfather of the "new Leipzig School" of painting, is bound to be a big event.

"I see myself as a theatre director, " Rauch said in an interview Holger Liebs shortly before the show opened, and his new works certainly enigmatic dramas and the familiar cast of artists, labourers, angels and devils, often involved in vaguely Leviathan - esque struggles set against a series of fractured and unstable exteriors and interiors. Although Rauch's new works remains instantly recognisable for its malenge of socialist realism, 1950s domestic advertising and nineteenth-century romanticism, his range of art - historical references continues to expand, incorporating nods to the Renaissance and an increasingly surrealist tone.
da ARTREVIEW 2006