LUMA Arles / Overpainted Photographs

LUMA Arles presents an exhibition devoted to Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs, one of the most important and most radical bodies of work in six decades of his practice. By working directly on photographic snapshots with oil paint, Richter dismantles the supposed authority of photography as a reliable record of reality. The image is neither fully revealed nor entirely obscured: it becomes a contested surface where representation and abstraction clash.

In these dense works, Richter subjects the photographic image to gesture, chance and material. The painted marks interrupt its descriptive function, shifting it from a support of evidence to a space of ambiguity. What appears is no longer a document but an event – the revelation of how memory, perception and meaning are constantly built up and undone.

Overpainted Photographs explores the central questions of Richter's practice: the limits of representation, the instability of truth, the conditions under which images shape belief. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see these discreet yet radical works and to experience their enduring relevance and profound influence on contemporary artistic discourse. In an era defined by the proliferation and manipulation of images, the Overpainted Photographs stand as fundamental works, making the image a site of uncertainty, resistance and transformation.