LESS IS MORE

The reduction of the color palette is one of Thomas Riese’s essential tools, one he employs to redirect the viewer’s attention away from extraneous details. He produces digital photographs with usually fewer than twelve colors. In doing so, the photographer from Nuremberg affords the viewer a new, intensive visual experience through his creative transformation of scenes, which he draws from the realm of the everyday. Such a stance aligns him with the tradition of the Romanticists, who maintained that works of art should encourage contemplation, freeing the viewer for a moment from the constraints of the quotidian world – indeed creating an antipode to the experiences of daily alienation. Details that demand too much attention disrupt the quietude of reflection; what they have to tell remains locks the viewer in the daily world rather than releasing him from it.

Riese’s series “Public Places” is dedicated to people in public space. People and architecture are in constant, intense contact with one another. It is no coincidence that Riese is drawn to and inspired by the Spinnerei Leipzig, one of the art venues newly created in recent years and full of resonate energy. In the case of Riese’s images of soccer fans in the stadium’s ranks, the encounters develop into dynamic compositions, which through a high degree of abstraction and the adroit selection of strong color tones are charged with painterly energy.

Horst Klöver