The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York
212-535-7710
The Gioconda and Joseph King Gallery
Lila Acheson Wallace Wing
Neo Rauch at the Met: para
May 22-September 23

Neo Rauch at the Met: para presents 11 new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition is the third in the Museum’s series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.

Shaped by the experience of growing up in East Germany, Rauch’s paintings teeter between Surrealism and popular imagery, defying easy interpretation. Viewers are drawn into scenes replete with strange beings and ambiguous landscapes. Full of activity yet mysteriously static in feeling, Rauch’s paintings are fantasy painted as fact, and many of his large-format works are populated by figures that are connected spatially, yet remain alienated and unaware of each other. With a distinctive palette of bright acidic colors contrasting with deep shadows, the artist’s paintings conjure up an atmosphere of confused nostalgia and failed utopias.

Rauch has said, “For me, painting means the continuation of a dream with other means.” The artist is inspired by misplaced memories and momentary perceptions that are lost before they can be named. In this vein, Rauch has titled his exhibition at the Met para. Although there are many familiar elements in the parallel world of Rauch’s paintings, the situations depicted are bizarre and the normal is mixed freely with the abnormal.

Trained at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Rauch continues to live and work in the city of his birth, and has inspired a younger generation of painters in Leipzig’s thriving artistic community. Rauch’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2006); Muse?Le d’art contemporain de Montreal, Canada (2006); Albertina, Vienna, Austria (2004); Saint Louis Art Museum (2003); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (2001), among other museums.

On the occasion of the exhibition, DuMont publishers (Cologne, Germany) will release a related publication that will include 12 color illustrations and an essay by Werner Spies.

Neo Rauch, Vater [Father], 2007, Oil on canvas, 78 ¾ X 59", Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig / Berlin & David Zwirner, New York, © 2007 Neo Rauch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Photograph Uwe Walter.