In 2007 Rauch painted a serie of works especially for the mezzanine of the modern art wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. This special solo exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum was called “Para.” Rauch explains that he enjoys the associations the word “para” evokes and that his works at “Para” don’t have a particular intention, but that they could signify anything to anyone. His works were painted with the low ceiling and windowless space of the mezzanine in mind, Rauch explains, but this is hard to discover in his works, and the association might be purely existing in Rauch’s own experience.

The nihilist guideline to the exhibition denying any ideological intention is but a blase statement and nothing less than a smoke screen for such a narrative and figurative artist like Rauch who further explains that he believes in being bound by location and time. Such cultural relativist statement are nothing but the bourgeois resistance against a system of cultural and ideological oppression by a ‘labor class dictatorship.’ (lees verder…)