Untitled Document

born in Austria in 1960, lives and works in Vienna. Studies at University of Vienna and University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Numerous exhibits since the 90s, including Sadlers Wells London, DaimlerChrysler Contemporary Berlin, MUMOK Vienna, Ian Potter Museum Melbourne, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, Villa Merkel Esslingen, Wittgensteinhaus Vienna, Secession Vienna, Landesgalerie am Landesmuseum Linz, Sarah Cottier Gallery Sydney, Hamish McKay Gallery Wellington, Linc Art San Francisco, Christine König Galerie Vienna.

Reiter Raabe’s photographs provide a series of shifting contexts, both literal and associational. Documentary photographs that, when compiled into a loose linear narrative, pose conceptual questions specific to another medium entirely - namely painting. The results are jarring, disruptive, humorous and - ultimately - probing of larger issues of meaning.
The employment of photography forces Reiter Raabe’s viewers into a perceptual shift - as they are confronted first by the inherent urgency of the medium. The resulting “speed” of photographic visual recognition, along with its accompanying matter-of-fact veracity, repositions the manner in which the (otherwise by definition “slow”) paintings are viewed by a general audience. Taking the existing cultural position of monochrome painting and altering its pre-ordained manner of receivership. Because his artwork is essentially abstract, literal and concrete, Reiter Raabe is able to “re-depict” it anew through photography’s traditionally representational terms.

„The paintings themselves stress surface, procedure and self-restricted methodology. They typically contain brushed linear elements or poured paint agglomerations that result in subtly inflected color fields. Stressing automatist process engagement through the programmatic means of their making, they nonetheless enjoy a specific personal shared sensibility. He transforms venues to ‚sites’, into which he then ‚inserts’ painted wall surfaces as articulated planes or ‚placed’ objects as willful disruptions of spatial perception. In a larger sense, his practice could be termed ‚intervention’, a philosophy put into action.“ (John Zinnser)

„The dripping paintings are the opposite and in a certain sense also the negative of the so called ‚all-over paintings’ although they do not show a traditional structure of composition, either. The white surface is abstract in a far more radical sense, since the edges exclude a representation and there cannot be anything within them which had not been reduced by the artist and could possibly be reconstructed by our eyes. The artist is operating on the top level of a painting machine; this however, does not extend his body as a machine but rather restricts it. His painting machine functions on different levels, which allows for both, for planning and for coincidence, and which focuses on the very margins, where they meet.“ (Martin Prinzhorn)