To me, Neo Rauch's paintings are nostalgic, sinister paintings about the undeniable histories that we all have to reckon with in life. Their colours are muted and their rendering is old-fashionedly illustrational. He paints characters looking like male heroes outfitted in suits, boxing shorts or work clothes, in a world gone awry, like a Max Ernst collage. 

 

The characters always seem pensive, whilst they engage in odd activities with random objects entering the scene. The figures often seem unanchored, as if just taken from illustrated books and casually inserted. They are impossible scenes; peopled with hybrids and monsters as well as the more believable figures all mixed up in one painting. Their relationships to each other are obscure or non-existent. 

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He paints his people from a range of time periods, going as far back in German history to the 18th century. For example, in 'Losung' to the right, the absurd painting features a small country house with some figures in period costume from different centuries. There is a soldier dressed in a late 18th-century uniform leisurely executing a man in football gear from the 1950s. There is a half-naked fat man with a beard busy whipping some alien thing in his hand. 

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His paintings also resemble disjunctive avant-garde theatre stage sets from an earlier time. Their confusions of indoor and outdoor space are exaggerated by his painting techniques that swap between loosely illustrational to painterly. 

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I find his surreal paintings intriguing; it is like a curious time travel through German History but with the absence of any political agenda. They are like mythical celebrations from confused German histories. 

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