Rayk Goetze: Drei Wünsche Frei
The Leipzig painter's visual language contains art-historical references from the early Renaissance to modern and contemporary painting, blurring the boundaries between past and present. His figures seem to move freely in time and space and come together on the canvas to form new constellations. „The Envoys“ with their finely modulated facial features of Italian panel paintings and gestures of blessing appear here in high heels on a bright orange-pink background. In the last two years, Goetze has also found a starting point for his painterly investigations in historical group photographs from the early 20th century. Powerful dynasties and their fate arouse his interest. In one work, a scion of the Rockefeller family looks out at us with his hair neatly parted, posing all alone, unlike in the original document he was recruited from. From photography, Goetze transfers the figures into the medium which he masters magnificently. He uses painterly techniques in all their variations, combining the experimental use of color as raw material with detailed, fine studies of figures and drapery to create a synthesis of the classically figurative and the abstract non-representational. (...)
A society comes together. Right in front of us. In the paintings of Rayk Goetze. Sometimes we are silent observers of a dinner scene, sometimes at the mercy of the sharp gaze of the painterly counterpart across from us on the canvas. The eye glides from figure to figure, from a girl dressed in fine white with a bow in her hair to a young man with shirtless upper body. The gaze wanders over groups, couples and lonely people, lingering on many an irritating detail. Who is the lifeless figure under the table that those gathered above seem to be unaware of? Who is the floating, faceless figure at the edge of the party?
The Leipzig painter's visual language contains art-historical references from the early Renaissance to modern and contemporary painting, blurring the boundaries between past and present. His figures seem to move freely in time and space and come together on the canvas to form new constellations. „The Envoys“ with their finely modulated facial features of Italian panel paintings and gestures of blessing appear here in high heels on a bright orange-pink background. In the last two years, Goetze has also found a starting point for his painterly investigations in historical group photographs from the early 20th century. Powerful dynasties and their fate arouse his interest. In one work, a scion of the Rockefeller family looks out at us with his hair neatly parted, posing all alone, unlike in the original document he was recruited from. From photography, Goetze transfers the figures into the medium which he masters magnificently. He uses painting in all its variations, combining the experimental use of color as raw material with detailed, fine studies of figures and drapery to create a synthesis of the classically figurative and the abstract non-representational.
Paint as his pivotal creative medium is everywhere in Goetze's works. It pushes its way beyond the edge of the canvas in impasto layers, runs through the painting in traces, as brightly glowing splashes of paint, as confused intertwined lines, in geometrically arranged grid structures and wider structures. The paint deprives the face or body of some figures, tears them away from their context and leaves them behind in a tangle of lines, circles and textures. The resulting formal opening of the works creates free space for thought and the eye in the large formats, which are often richly filled with figures. Sometimes the radiant white umbrella in the dining table painting is clearly recognizable as such, then the altered gesture makes it loom over the heads of the society like a fluorescent mushroom. In other works, the painter pushes abstract renderings of the paint so far until only fragments of the human body remain, it seems to become a vortex of color or finally disappears completely into it, beneath it. Thus, color seems to be the actual subject of this painting and the fabric of the subject rather serves as an occasion.
Many art lovers’ wishes are fulfilled in this exhibition. And yet Rayk Goetze makes sure that there is space in and around his pictures, so that in the end perhaps: three wishes remain free.
Text by Mathilde Blum
