Bernd Ribbeck

Posted by Fabio 3 December 2012

Bernd Ribbeck’s new body of paintings on MDF sees acrylic, permanent marker pen and varnish methodically built up and ground down, systematically layered then scratched back, and Ribbeck’s interpretations of the spiritual and the profane grappling within small rectangular arenas of gestural energy and self-restraint.

While he is often rightly cited as an exceptional contemporary geometric harmonist, Ribbeck has never been afraid to unearth the murkiness of personal experience, and his new paintings in particular are enriched by the candour of disharmony. His self-defacing and scarring of the precise linear rationality of his mandala-like forms means Ribbeck’s works always hold true to the substance, tension and effort from which they have been wrought. For all his new paintings’ surprising luminosity and cadence, Bernd Ribbeck has ensured there’s a materiality to his metaphysics.

Bernd Ribbeck
Alison Jacques Gallery
21 November – 20 December 2012