Rainer Gross was born in Cologne in 1951 and studied art and painting at the University of Applied Sciences there. He has lived in New York since 1973 and became friends with greats of American culture such as Howard Kanovitz, Robert Motherwell and Kenneth Koch. Having initially begun his paintings in a very narrative, quotation-like structure, Rainer Gross has been working exclusively in the field of abstract painting for the last few years. His works present themselves as very complex condensations of color and material. Apparently monochrome at first glance, on closer inspection the paintings turn out to be multi-layered and repeatedly composed of different levels.
His Contact Paintings, which are created by pressing two canvases on top of each other, have achieved particular international renown. The result is a fascinating play with the presence and absence of the images. The twin paintings and the resulting doppelgangers summarize in painting what Rainer Gross has been addressing for many years: A dialog of cultures.
Rainer Gross continues to develop his Contact Paintings with his new series “Impressions and Strokes”. He now consciously paints impasto, gestural brushstrokes over the seemingly organic and amorphous color structures, which are mainly created by chance, as the artist delegates a large part of the painterly responsibility to the material and the process, and thus intervenes in the previous painterly nature.
“My new paintings of recent years have also experienced something unexpectedly new and poetic for me. The “Contact Paintings”, which have appeared as twins or singles since 1996, are now joined by the “Strokes”; thick oil brushstrokes over the organically arranged layers of the “Contacts”. They signal the deliberate human intervention in the layers of color shaped by nature. Aren’t we, with our culture, just a part of nature?”
