Untitled, 1985

Untitled, 1985, Paint on canvas, 144 × 104.5 cm

Part of a large series of paintings begun in the early 1980s, and in some cases completed in the early 1990s, these paintings explore themes intrinsically linked to the motif of the cross (as an intersection between life and death but also as an interruption of a line of continuity), the barrier or border (thus questioning the division imposed by the wall), and dissolve into abstract details of scratches and graffiti that seem to mimic spontaneous gestures on that very same surface of the separating wall.

(…) Working the surface so intensively situates painting as a thoroughly material arena for juxtaposing texts and images, drawing and painting. In Scriptulares Zeichenbild II (1985), Rehfeldt alludes to the thin lines that separate painting, drawing, and writing. The painting is configured as an inventory of mark-making: letters that never quite cohere, tracings suggestive of scrawled graffiti, and rudimentary stick figures. In contrast to the weightiness of his fields of color, patches of chalk nearly vanish in places, as in the washes of blue just above the center.
(Inter Alios, Inter Alia: Robert Rehfeldt Between Mail Art and Painting – Christopher Williams-Wynn).