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until 19.11. | #3694ARTatBerlin | Köppe Contemporary presents from 22. October 2022 (Opening: 21.10.) the exhibition Bruchlinien by the artist Thomas Ritz.
The Basel-based artist is showing new works from the past three years under the exhibition title Bruchlinien. Landscape is a core theme in Ritz’s oeuvre. Water, the primeval matter of life, is often a central carrier of meaning in the pictures. Thus, the pictorial worlds in his current show mainly show water landscapes – rivers or lakes, coastal stretches, ocean depths and distant sea horizons.
On the one hand, water draws Ritz as a refuge and sanctuary of existence. Without water there is no life! On the other hand, water, rivers and oceans are marked by the ecological consequences of civilisation and the excesses of environmental destruction. The disrespectful, unsparing treatment of them shows man’s disregard for nature.
In many of the artist’s landscape paintings, the viewer is confronted with the dissolution of the former unity of man and nature. Thomas Ritz’s motifs oscillate between (apparent) natural idylls and precarious conditions. Signs of this disproportion can be found everywhere in his works. The gaze is drawn to destroyed natural scenarios or apocalyptic-looking motifs – scenes of rubble or ruins. Such images remain enigmatic and are never unambiguous.
The people who appear in Ritz’s motifs are usually characterised in a shadowy way. Often their actions appear ambiguous. We do not know who they are or where they live. Ritz’s figures seem remote and anonymous. Are they located in yesterday, today or tomorrow?
Our existential experiences are the artist’s theme. A turn of the times is expressed in his paintings. Ritz paints the creeping state of an alienation that has long since occurred. The relationship between man and nature seems to have failed. Man seems to be in a state of limbo – without roots, without identity and without orientation. He seems to be on his way to another world full of unknown dimensions.
Thomas Ritz received the Förderpreis der Rheinischen Wirtschaft. He is a laureate of the Basel ARK Art Prize and the Swiss Keller-Wedekind Foundation.
Text: André Lindhorst, 2022
Opening: Friday, 21. October 2022, 19:00 – 22:00
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 22. October 2022 until Saturday, 19. November 2022
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Image caption: Thomas Ritz, O.T., 2022 | Pigment, Acrylharz auf Leinwand, 184 x 150 cm | Kat.Nr. 2022-1147
Exhibition Thomas Ritz – Köppe Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Galerien Berlin | ART at Berlin
