Two things are immediately apparent when you look at the art of Neo Rauch: his technical skills are virtuosic and the paintings are consistently enigmatic. Visually, there is much to see. The paintings and large drawings are activity-laden; every character in his compositions is doing something, the kind of work that moves objects around but to no evident purpose and with no apparent outcome. Structures get built, costumes are put on, men and women pay rapt attention to what they are doing. But for the viewer nothing adds up to anything that could be declared a readable narrative. "Der Stammbaum/Family Tree", 2017, is a large oil on paper drawing that was included in “Neo Rauch: Aus Dem Boden/ From the Floor” at The Drawing Center in New York from April 11 to July 28 of this year. The title seems to allude to a confusing ceremony in which a single tree is being planted by a man dressed in red clothes, as is a couple who are holding red containers that might contain water, or might be shopping bags. Or, as a way of extending the meaning of the eponymous title, they could be members of a genealogical family tree. The shadows their bodies project onto the ground are swirling, dwarfish shapes, like contorted puddles. The planting in which they are participants takes place in a public space dominated by an odd piece of sculpture that draws the attention of four darkly dressed figures. A fifth figure looks back at us. He could be one of the picnicking men in Manet’s "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe", 1863, except the situation we find him in is no frolic. Rauch is open to what he has elsewhere described as “the desire for risky encounters,” and his inclination is to stage disruptions in the work; the degree of that disruption can be everything from “a fine fracture” to “an act of violence.” "Der Stammbaum" is a measure of the former; "Sperre/Barrier", 2018, presents something of the latter. The painting includes a captive giraffe, an orator who stands on a wooden crate that is comprised of a roil of snakes, and a woman who is about to cast down a flag, with Old Testament zeal, on a hybrid man/snake whose world-weariness makes him a perfect victim. The colour of the flags the woman holds matches the edges of the wooden X-shaped barrier above him. In other paintings by Rauch this assembly becomes a surrogate crucifix, waiting for a man or a snake, or both.
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