Andreas Reiter Raabe

Sonate 12, 2000

Andreas Reiter Raabe’s Pools series has been emerging since 1998. The works need countless working stages, in which he pours paint on to the canvas and forms the said pools. The overlaying colors produce layers leading to a relief-like structure, but this lacks an internal ordering principle. The Drippings came into being at the same time in these pictures. The series emerged ‘by chance’ from the drops of paint that the Pools produced as they came into being by dripping over the edge of the picture on to a canvas placed underneath. The creation process for the Pools carries the Drippings within it, the one process is not conceivable without the other. Reiter Raabe’s starting-point for these works is chance, which lends the side issue – the drops – the same significance as the main issue, and the way chance is expanded into painting. Therefore, in the way they manage color, the material of painting, both workgroups contrast coincidence with control, and order with disorder. Thus they illustrate the conflict of mind versus matter.