Chimères de Daniel Richter (Danser la catastrophe)

In the spring of 2022, shortly after the great Covid crisis, German painter Daniel Richter exhibited ecstatic bodies at the Scuola Grande di San Fantin in Venice. Richter said that his work was a dialogue with the Mannerist paintings by Palma the Younger showcased in this very museum. Mannerist painting is closely linked to the sack of Rome and the great plague epidemic of that time. As a metaphor for today's disaster, the German painter drew his inspiration for his series of canvases from a postcard depicting German war-mutilated soldiers from the First world War. In this exchange of eras, a skilful blend of living bodies and prostheses transforms these simultaneously grotesque and heroic figures into exuberant, creative and ecstatic chimeras. Richter's mannerist turn in painting thus transfigures the disaster of the current geopolitics crisis into dancing chimera figures. When creation and destruction meet, it is necessary to ensure that their vital overabundance does not turn into self-destruction. It is up to these hybrid figures to question the eternal return of a catastrophe that unsettles the geographical, political, economic, historical, psychic, artistic, plastic and social boundaries of an era.