The last show of Kotscha Reist at the gallery was entitled “Painting for Life“ and dealt with the ambiguities of a painter’s life in his art environment and the art market. For the current show the title had been reduced to “Painting Life“- putting life itself at the centre of interest. The works shown have been created within the last two years, displaying a certain distinctive maturity. Seemingly unfinished brush strokes show the brief sketchy moment of a motive’s discovery. The foggy glaze, which used to subtly cover his previous works, has been lifted – the viewer is directly confronted with the events, making withdrawal impossible. The works seem liberated; one color patch is set to another – juxtaposing hard reality with sensuality.The bases of Kotscha Reist’s paintings are mainly photo originals. He interprets them freely and conveys them to the canvas in an altered way. The images are taken from newspapers, magazines or shot by the artist. A cosmos of actuality and history unfolds itself to the viewer, sometimes dimly cautious, sometimes powerfully put on scene. Landscapes and interiors are shown equally next to figurative works.

The motives are of great diversity, yet subjects such as branch compositions, persons in strange postures, window situations or animals recur. Even different version of the same subject can be found again. By means of enlarging or downsizing the samples are changed. Details are faded out or placed right in the centre of the picture. Kotscha Reist always focuses on seeming triviality, which is thereby cut off from the connection with reality. On the one hand the pictures stand for a view into a microcosm, on the other they seem to be macrocosmic illustrations of the world. In any case they are snapshots pulled out of a timeline, sometimes taken totally out of context and placed into another world – becoming irritating fragments of a collective memory.

Bernhard Bischoff, 2009/2011