about

Christian Rietz (*1983) lives and works in Potsdam, Germany. He grew up observing the world around him, trained as a publisher, studied economics and communication, and worked both as an entrepreneur and as an employee. Since 2023 he has been fully dedicated to painting. As a self-taught painter, he carries on observing, researching and exploring the world. He practises concentrating on the essentials, distinguishing the important from the unimportant and not taking himself too seriously in the process.

Rietz’s work navigates the tension between reduction and presence. In an age of visual overload, he explores the possibility of creating dense, concentrated experiences with minimal means. For him, painting is not an image in the classical sense, but a space that demands intense viewing.

Each of his works arises from an exploration of materials, space, and light. Colour is not a vehicle of representation, but substance and resistance. Through layering and overlapping, Rietz creates surfaces that appear simultaneously closed and open. He understands the canvas as a field of tension where silence is transformed into presence.

Rietz’s process is guided by restraint and repetition. Many works emerge from subtle shifts – a variation in proportion, a minimal change in surface, a difference in the way light is absorbed. These nuances open spaces for viewers willing to look closely, and to question the obvious.

In this way, his painting becomes a counterpoint to the speed and excess of our present. It is an invitation to slow down and understand reduction not as abstinence, but as concentration.