Gerhard Richter: Patterns: Divided, Mirrored, Repeated - Tapa dura

Lacking "the time and quietness" that he needs for painting, he said, he indulged in a mentally relaxing game of chance, which he has documented in a dazzling, text-free book, "Patterns" (Distributed Art Publishers).--Peter Schjeldahl "The New Yorker "

"... My friend bought a painting, and he bought me a good reproduction--a wonderful poster. And it attracted me. I started to play with a mirror. I doubled and shrank and divided and mirrored and divided. It was like a gift which I didn't design. I like it a lot when I get something by chance... It's very decorative. I am fascinated by [composer] John Cage, and he says it well: "I have nothing to say, so I say it"...People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop doing it or having it. On the other hand, it seems we don't need painting anymore. Culture is more interested in entertaining people. Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things."--Belinda Luscombe "Time "

Patterns represents a brilliant new adventure in image-making and book-making by Gerhard Richter, who in recent years has produced several fascinating explorations of the possibilities of the artist's book. For this latest project, Richter took an image of his work "Abstract Painting" (CR: 7244) and divided it vertically into strips: first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, up to 4,096 strips. This process, involving twelve stages of division, results in 8,190 strips, each of which is reproduced here at the height of the original image. With each stage of division, the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is just 0.08 millimeters; further divisions would only become visible by enlargement). Each strip is then mirrored and repeated, producing an incredibly detailed patterning. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. The resulting 221 patterns are reproduced here on landscape spreads, making for a truly extraordinary reading-viewing book experience.
Born in Dresden, East Germany, in 1932, Gerhard Richter migrated to West Germany in 1961, settling in Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, and where he held his first solo exhibition in 1963. Over the course of that decade, Richter helped to liberate painting from the legacy of Socialist Realism (in Eastern Germany) and Abstract Expressionism (in Western Germany and throughout Europe). He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, with a major European touring retrospective in London, Berlin and Paris in 2012. He lives and works in Cologne.