Neo Rauch: At the Well

The richly textured, seductive paintings of German artist Neo Rauch are marked by a “distinctive Pop-Surrealist-Social Realist style,” as described by The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith in 2002. Incorporating disjunctive references to disparate eras, techniques, and aesthetics, they evoke “avant-garde theater stage sets from an earlier time ... both buoyant and tamped down, comic and earnest.” In many of his compositions, human figures engaged in manual labor or indeterminable tasks work against backdrops of mundane architecture, industrial settings, or bizarre and often barren landscapes. Scale is frequently arbitrary and non-perspectival, which adds to an overall dreamlike atmosphere; spatial relationships seem to construct an imaginary realm all of its own, one which both defies logic and feels somehow familiar.  At the Well, produced to coincide with the 2014 exhibition of Rauch’s new works at David Zwirner in New York, brings together small and large format paintings tha