Metropolitan Museum Presents Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch at the Met presents six new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition - on view from May 22 through September 23, 2007 -is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.

Shaped by the experience of growing up in East Germany, Rauch's paintings teeter between Surrealism and Social Realism, defying easy interpretation. Viewers are drawn into scenes replete with strange beings and ambiguous landscapes. Full of activity yet mysteriously static in feeling, Rauch's paintings are fantasy painted as fact, and many of his large-format works are populated by figures that are connected spatially, yet remain alienated and unaware of each other. With a distinctive palette of bright acidic colors contrasting with deep shadows, the artist's paintings conjure up an atmosphere of confused nostalgia and failed utopias.

Trained at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Rauch continues to live and work in the city of his birth, and has inspired a younger generation of painters in Leipzig's thriving artistic community. Rauch's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2006); Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal, Canada (2006); Albertina, Vienna, Austria (2004); Saint Louis Art Museum (2002); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (2001), among other museums.

Neo Rauch at the Met is organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan's Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. -- www.metmuseum.org