Picture "Dome Corner I" (1998)

The work "Dome Corner I" by Gerhard Richter belongs to the photography-based works in which the artist explores the boundaries between representation and abstraction. The Cibachrome photograph is characterised by an intense colour effect and a strong surface presence. The motif eludes clear readability and oscillates between figurative reference and painterly dissolution. Reflections, refractions of light and the specific materiality create a visual irritation that invites the viewer to engage in active perception.

Here, Richter takes up one of his central artistic questions: the relationship between reality, the photographic image and subjective experience. Created in the 1990s, the work stands in the context of Richter's increasing turn towards overpainted photographs and glass works, in which reflection and materiality play central roles. At the same time, it marks a phase in which Richter consistently established photographic media as an independent form of artistic expression within contemporary art.

Cibachrome photograph between Plexiglas sheets, 1998. Edition: 60 copies + 6 artist's proofs, numbered, signed, dated and titled. Size 78 x 55 cm.

Producer: ARTES Kunsthandelsgesellschaft mbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hannover, Deutschland, E-Mail: [email protected]

The field of graphic arts, that includes artistic representations, which are reproduced by various printing techniques.

Printmaking techniques include woodcuts, copperplate engraving, etching, lithography, serigraphy, among others.

A process for producing images by the action of light, which became widely known in 1839. Photography quickly became the basis for the expanding image industry that pushed the manually produced pictures, paintings and drawings aside.

The avant-garde painting adopted photographic form elements, to restore the painting’s rightful significance. In the 1920s, many avant-garde painters devoted themselves to photography. With his photographs and photomontages, called "rayographs", the American painter Man Ray developed new means of expression in modern art.

The Pop Art of the 1960s varied and alienated the public photograph through technical means. The American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) is the most famous master of this art movement with his images and image series created in this way.