Neo Rauch Works 1994-2002 The Leipziger Volkszeitung Collection

The "Coolest name in art" is how Telepolis magazine referred to German abstract artist Neo Rauch. The subject of articles in the New Yorker, Frieze and Artforum for art combining the influences of Soviet propaganda art, Max Beckmann and American Pop, he has been shown in galleries in several American cities and throughout Europe. His large paintings and drawings of the human figure and people at work have earned him the Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art and the Leipzig Art Award. Rauch delights in spatial disjunctions where a bucolic landscape of massive industrial buildings and airplanes on a runway might be juxtaposed with a cut-out of a horse in the act of leaping out of the canvas. Uniformed men in an assembly line attend to indefinable jobs at unrecognizable machines. Is Rauch saying, with his figural depictions, that our inexhaustible endeavors are absurd? Some critics find in his tough vision and melding of realism and surrealism an expression not only about the ambiguities of contemporary life but the mystery of human existence. This catalogue was published by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the first American museum to give Rauch a one-person exhibition.