Untitled

With its flickering optical glare, Untitled, 2012, is a fascinating example of Anselm Reyle’s celebrated foil paintings. The articulated surface of the work irresistibly attracts the viewer’s gaze. A deepblue crumpled sheet of shimmering foil applied on canvas is enclosed in an acrylic glass box – light runs and moves across its angles and peaks, highlighting the medium’s shimmering materiality. Seduced by this game of reflections, the viewer is encouraged to explore the tactile quality of the foil, its malleability and fragility contained in the geometric safe environment of the glass box. Untitled’s object-like presence blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, witnessing Reyle’s continued questioning of the legacy of twentieth- century abstraction. Yves Klein’s International Blue meets Arman’s readymades in a flashing explosion of colour alluding to the imagery of billboards and high-street wrapping paper, an ironic celebration of the kitsch of today’s glossy consumer culture. Creating a dialogue between high and low art, Reyle explores the dialogue between abstraction and decoration, obscuring the distinction between the static heritage of fine art and the dynamism of contemporary reality.