What makes us move on?

Since the 90s, Geneva-based German artist Uta Richter has worked on topics that deal with the inner driving forces of human nature. Mythological references and expressive female figures are reference points in her paintings.

Uta Richter tries to understand and deconstruct the essential mechanisms of human existence: What helps victory, of what does weekness consist. The five series Du sollst nie wieder (You should never again) (2007), Sieg (Victory) (2007), Es gibt Menschen, die gar keine sind (There are humans that aren't human) (2007), Paradiesvögel (paradise birds) (2007) und Only (2007) open the view on an allegorically encoded, carefully hostile world.

In Sieg (Victory) a young girl is jumping on a trampoline. Her body will have to follow the laws of nature, as the net she jumps on is freely suspended in the air and wont be able to hold her. The apparently close victory over death blinds the one who wants to force the events: A golden leaf from the laurel crown of Cesar covers his left eye. Cesar is blinded and at the same time enters the light into the living spaces of human bats. (Es gibt Menschen, die gar keine sind – there are humans that are not human). Inspired by mythology, anthropomorphism is in Uta Richter’s work a way of lightening the human nature. In Only, birdwomen soar over the Ettersberg near Weimar.

In Du sollst nie wieder (You should never again), a bride and a dancer bellow a song, that once sang, can't be taken away from them any more. All these figures are icons of individual freedom and autonomy.