Fence 2015

Gerhard Richter, sometime in the late twentieth century, made "Fence" with oil on canvas, blurring our perception. The painting's surface is smooth, almost as if the image has been wiped away before it fully formed, which resonates with Richter's wider engagement with photography and its inherent ambiguity. Take a look at how the colors bleed into each other, the boundary between the fence and the foliage behind it is not clearly delineated. Instead, we have a hazy, dreamlike impression. This mark-making is very process driven. The fence itself is not just a physical barrier, but also a visual one, obscuring what lies beyond. The painting reminds me a bit of Vija Celmins' photorealistic drawings, not in terms of style, but in the shared interest in the poetics of everyday imagery. Ultimately, Richter's "Fence" invites us to contemplate the nature of seeing, and the ways in which reality is always mediated, always just out of reach.