Cage 5 2020

Gerhard Richter made this, Cage 5, by layering and scraping paint—a dance of addition and subtraction. I imagine Richter in the studio, a back and forth: putting the paint on, then pulling it off, maybe with a squeegee or a big knife. The colors are muted, mostly grays, blacks, and whites, but there are these little pops of red and yellow, like buried treasure. It's like he’s trying to find something, digging through the layers to reveal… what? I love how a single gesture can change everything. See that smear of white across the middle? It cuts through the darkness, bringing light and air into the composition. It reminds me of de Kooning's excavations and erasures—all of them searching. Painting is a conversation across time, each artist responding to the ones who came before. It’s about the process of seeing, thinking, and feeling, all at once. It's an invitation to engage with ambiguity and uncertainty, to find our own meaning within the layers.