When German painter Daniel Richter radically switched painting styles c. 2015, moving from newspaper or history book-inspired representational scenes to more expressionistic scenarios, he explained that he wanted to get away from the ‘theater stage,’ and from ‘…knowing what I’m about to do.’ His recent paintings at GRIMM Gallery feature powerful, abstracted encounters between unknown actors, creating dramas that go beyond a particular moment in time. Here, two figures emerge from a dark background locked in combat against a dramatically lit sky, their large scale suggesting an apocalyptic encounter between the toga-clad character on the left and the alien-like combatant with elongated, insectoid leg on the left. (On view on the Lower East Side through Jan 4th).
