"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." — William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

In November 2024, Yi Space proudly presents a two-person exhibition featuring German artists Daniel Richter and Matthias Franz. This marks the first time their works are shown in dialogue, as well as Franz's debut exhibition in Asia. The exhibition explores their former teacher-student relationship, as Richter served as Franz's professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2019. The exhibition presents Richter's latest paintings and drawings from 2019 to 2024, along with related etchings and lithographs, displayed alongside a series of new paintings by Franz. These works are filled with surreal scenes, vibrant figures, and their social contexts.

Even before Plato, philosophers recognized the importance of the senses, attempting to explain how humans perceive and understand the world through sensory experience. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that the senses shape our understanding of the world and attest to our existence. Yet in the current era of rapidly advancing information technology, electronic devices have become crucial mediators of human perception, the physicality of the body continuously dissolving, the boundaries of the senses gradually blurring. As William Blake observed, humanity, having sealed the doors of perception, remains confined to the corner of a cave of its own construction, unable to glimpse the vastness beyond.

Daniel Richter is a Berlin-based painter with extensive exhibition experience across Europe and the United States, and is regarded as one of the most esteemed German artists of his generation. In Richter's painterly world, surreal imagery merges art history, politics, and cultural memory. Influenced by aggression, isolation, and awkwardness, powerful contours, colors, and forms interact, achieving a balance between abstraction and figuration. Richter considers this binary opposition in painting an artificial fiction, as the formal concerns of color and composition remain constant—a conceptual framework that has consistently shaped the development of his work.

Matthias Franz studied under Daniel Richter. In his paintings, soft earth tones contrast sharply with shadowy contours and saturated primary colors, constructing fictional architectural spaces or improbable perspectives. He confronts the complexities of contemporary life, using painting as a means to witness and document his era. Though these works possess a dreamlike quality, Franz's semi-derelict scenes offer possibilities for creativity and spaces for transformation. He distances the viewer's perspective from the painting's interior, allowing viewers to peer through the frame, "seeking the inner depth and secrets of things."

German artists Daniel Richter and Matthias Franz guide the senses on an artistic dialogue, focusing on every subtle experience—visual, auditory, and beyond—enabling us to rediscover the wondrous intricacies of self and world.