Field Signs | Neo Rauch Solo Exhibition Introduction

David Zwirner is pleased to announce Field Signs, an exhibition of new paintings by German artist Neo Rauch at its Hong Kong location. This presentation follows the artist’s 2021 solo exhibition The Signpost at David Zwirner New York and marks his second solo show at the Hong Kong gallery, after his 2019 exhibition Propaganda. Rauch’s work was recently the subject of the 2023 solo exhibition The Dream of Reason at MoCo Montpellier Contemporain, France, and Neo Rauch: Die Mitte, which was on view at Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, the Netherlands, in 2022.

Neo Rauch, Feldzeichen, 2023, Oil on linen

The namesake of the exhibition, Feldzeichen (2023), translated as “field signs,” is a large painting that features the titular objects—in particular, examples from ancient Rome—which traditionally serve as emblems for organizing military units and demarcating plots and territories by farmers or soldiers. However, in Rauch’s composition the narrative is more ambiguous: human figures of varying scale and dress engage in perplexing configurations in an interior scene. A woman and a man clad in yellow seemingly argue on the right-hand side of the canvas as a tiny fire burns in the rural landscape behind them. The same iron sign reappears in Sonne (2023), being wielded by a bearded figure who stands under rays of sunlight and among a series of pylons, and again in Trift (2023)—meaning “drift” or alternatively “grazing pasture”—in which the placards are utilized as different kinds of instruments. These retro-futurist objects become motifs in the artist’s paintings, an example of how forms, figures, and even certain stylistic flourishes exist as personal iconography that Rauch frequently draws upon and reincorporates into his work.

Neo Rauch, Entflogen, 2023, Oil on linen

Widely celebrated as one of the most influential figurative painters working today, Rauch has gained international acclaim for richly colored and elaborate paintings that contain a repertoire of invented characters, settings, objects, and motifs. At once realistic and familiar, enigmatic and inscrutable, his paintings often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with the artistic traditions of realism—yet they are dreamlike and frequently contain disparate and overlapping spaces and forms. As writer Thomas Meaney notes, “Rauch is known for … huge, dense, ostensibly narrative scenes in which narrative is stubbornly elusive. Events seem to take place in a parallel world. Portions of a canvas can be futuristic, with space-age infrastructure, while elsewhere there may be a sky out of Tiepolo and people who have come from the Napoleonic Wars or some primordial Europe.” Though his art is highly refined and executed with considerable technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.”2

Neo Rauch, Zeichen setzen, 2023, Oil on linen

Exhibition Details

• Field Signs | Neo Rauch Solo Exhibition
• Date: November 16, 2023 - February 24, 2024
• Time: 11:00-19:00 (Tuesday to Saturday)
• Venue: David Zwirner
• Address: 5-6/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central, Central, Hong Kong

About the Artist - Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch (b. 1960) was born in Leipzig, where he continues to live and work, and studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. Rauch has been represented by David Zwirner since his first show with the gallery in New York in 2000. His 2019 solo exhibition Propaganda at the gallery’s Hong Kong location marked the artist’s first solo presentation in China, and Neo Rauch: Rondo was presented in 2016 at the gallery’s London location. Previous solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York include The Signpost (2021), At the Well (2014), Heilstätten (2011), Neo Rauch (2008), Renegaten (2005), Neo Rauch (2002), and the aforementioned Neo Rauch (2000).

Source of the above information: David Zwirner official website