When it comes to her art, Grit Richter isn’t interested in the representation of reality. Rather, she enquires into the representation of memories and experiences. Her oil paintings are shifting between abstraction and figuration, as Richter searches for a way to visualize universal feelings.
“As memories, unconsciousness and emotional movements are very hazy areas, it was difficult for me to find a definition for what I‘m really interested in my work,” she observed in an interview with Art of Choice. “I could feel it, but I didn‘t have words for it. And I still think it‘s hard to put in words what is moving you in deep inside, what you feel and what role memory is playing. That‘s why I‘m lucky to be a painter, as I believe that paintings (and art in general) have the great potential of representing that hazy area in a very poetic, nonverbal but strong, feel-able way.”
Born in Dresden in 1977, Richter studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, before she continued her study at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Now based in Hamburg, Germany, her works are extensively shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Not restricted to painting only, her artwork also includes installations and sculptures.
“My work is not about my personal memories or unconsciousness,” she stresses, “although they are the base on which I start to develop the ideas for my works. I believe that there exists something like a collective emotional structure which we share and which connects us. In my work I‘m trying to visualize the unrepresentable, to create an aesthetic parable of our inner world, and therefore I’m trying to find a visualization that connects and hits the common points in this collective structure.”
Take a look at some of her abstract representations in the gallery below.
