Cosondra Sjostrom and Gerhard Richter: Layered Revelation and Material Process

Gerhard Richter’s abstract works are celebrated for their complex, often scraped and blurred surfaces that explore the interplay of chance, control, memory, and materiality. His use of squeegees and other tools to drag, obscure, and reveal paint layers creates a haunting depth that resists fixed meaning.

Sjostrom shares Richter’s fascination with process-driven revelation. The additive and subtractive techniques, building dense layers only to scrape and veil them, produce similarly rich, stratified surfaces where hidden emotional strata emerge. Both artists understand the canvas as a site of accumulation and excavation.

The key distinction is intentionality and origin. Richter’s abstractions often maintain a cooler, more detached or photographic distance, embracing chance and the erosion of clarity. Sjostrom’s process, while equally material, is anchored in specific psychological sources. Each work is an Abstract Portrait born from human conversation and lived experience. Her warmer, more luminous chromatic language and recurring rectangular architecture infuse the layered surfaces with existential weight and personal presence.

Sjostrom thus extends Richter’s material innovations into a practice where process serves emotional identity and universal resonance.