The Sprengel Museum Hannover will be mounting the first German museum exhibition of the Dutch artist Michael Raedecker (born 1963), who for many years has been living and working in London.

A characteristic feature of Raedecker’s works is the combination of acrylic colours and threads. The depicted objects – architecture, trees or plants – are outlined, and sometimes detailed, by coloured threads of wool, which the artist embroiders into the canvas. The embroidering process considerably decelerates and deepens the painting process. The relief-like contours formed by the threads bring into play a level of depiction that is not only representational but is itself three-dimensional reality. At the same time the matte sheen of the threads stands out mysteriously against the mostly dark and somewhat eerie colour of the background, lending what are actually ordinary, everyday motifs a mystical, spiritual quality. This alienation of ordinary objects also takes place on a compositional level through a process of division, fragmentation and dematerialization. Thus Raedecker leaves the three levels of operation – the content, the medium and the mood – hanging in the balance and, figuratively speaking, open on all sides.

The exhibition, which has been organized in cooperation with the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, will be showing 40 works, some of very large format, from all of the artist’s periods of creativity and is so far the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s works.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Jörg Heiser, Astrid Ihle and Reinhard Spieler (German/English, 96 pages). 

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