Christoph Ruckhӓberle Exhibition

ZieherSmith (516 W 20th St.)

This event has ended.

In his newest series of twenty-one works, Christoph Ruckhӓberle replaces oil paints with dramatic contrasts rendered in high gloss enamel. Influenced by his experience as a master printmaker accustomed to creating compositions with an economy of means, the artist exploits various techniques of drawing, cutting and taping to achieve stark juxtapositions of flatness and depth. The bold pigments are not mixed, and different layers of hues react with one another to create inconsistencies that themselves become the attestations of painterly gesture

Ruckhӓberle continues to wrestle, challenge and confront the masters that have come before. Alluding to traditional ideals of painting, which may be both revered and criticized, his subject, in fact, becomes painting itself.

The artist has been widely acclaimed including several reviews in The New York Times which first described the work as “refreshingly unlike the usual painterly fare in Chelsea,” (Ken Johnson, 2004), later noted that he “seems to approach painting as an open book, of which any page can be ripped out, as long as it is used in, and not simply pasted to, the present” (Roberta Smith, 2006) and then described his 2013 exhibition at ZieherSmith as “an arresting show that makes us remember what all the fuss was about” (Karen Rosenberg).

His work has been exhibition extensively in museums internationally, including in 2016 at the Nationale Art Museum & Goethe Institut Hanoi, Vietnam and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. Notable collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Rubell Collection, Miami, Florida.