Christian Rietz

Christian Rietz (*1983) lives and works in Potsdam, Germany. Before turning to painting, he worked for twenty years across strategy, technology, and innovation. Since 2023, he has devoted himself entirely to the practice of painting.

His works hold the tension between reduction and presence. In an age of visual overload, he creates dense, concentrated experiences with minimal means. His paintings open spaces that demand intense viewing.

Each work arises from an exploration of materials, space, and light. Through layering and overlapping, Rietz creates near-monochrome surfaces that appear simultaneously closed and open. His process is guided by restraint and repetition: subtle shifts in proportion, opacity, the way light is absorbed.

The work operates within the resonance field of concrete and monochrome painting, without claiming either as an inheritance. Reduction is a method that was developed independently through two decades spent elsewhere, before painting became the only necessary language.

Rietz's painting is a counterpoint to the speed and excess of our present. It is an invitation to understand reduction not as abstinence, but as concentration.

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Cover image: Karoline Wolf