In March 2019, the German artist Neo Rauch opened his first solo show in Asia at David Zwirner’s Hong Kong gallery. In English, it was called “Propaganda”; the Chinese title was translated as “publicity”. From a distance, Rauch’s work always looks quaint. Then you move closer and observe the mutilations, the claws, the grotesque instruments, the approaching storms. The viewer is chilled and intrigued by a sense of impending disaster. Four years later – during which the world has seen many very real disasters – Rauch once more has a show at David Zwirner in Hong Kong. In German, it’s called “Feldzeichen”. In English, the translation is “Field Signs”, which suggests something agricultural – “the farmer and his potatoes,” as he puts it one morning in the gallery – although the original reference is to the ancient banners carried by Roman troops to mark their conquered territories.
Rauch enjoys double meanings but he doesn’t spell them out. Every one of the 15 paintings in the show has an untranslated German title. In some of the new works, the old Roman standards are held aloft and abandoned in corners; they loom large and they shrink. His is a world of huge insects, tiny individuals, multi-horned beasts and glinting blades, as if his compatriots, the brothers Grimm and Heinrich Hoffmann (writer of Der Struwwelpeter), had joined forces to create a dark, social-realist fairy tale.