Since the early 1960s, Gerhard Richter has tirelessly explored the infinite possibilities of painting and gained status as a celebrated artist worldwide. STRIP-TOWER (962), 2023, expands on the artist’s enduring investigations of painting, photography, digital reproduction and abstraction. Building on his series of Abstract Paintings from the 1970s onwards, and Strip Paintings made since 2011, with STRIP-TOWER (962) the artistmoves his explorations into three dimensions. Created using glossy ceramic tiles that clad two perpendicular panels to create a cruciform structure of 12 faces, Marcus du Sautoy describes the work as a piece of ‘complexity and simplicity’; its vertically stripes hiding a deeper, symmetrical process. This book commemorates the first public presentation of the work which was organised by Serpentine in London’s Kensington Gardens from April 2024 to February 2025.
This publication presents the artwork in a mini flipbook that animates the images when pages are flipped, so that the sculpture appears in the round.
Publication:
July 2026
Illustrations:
75
Dimensions:
95 x 140 mm
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
978-1-911736-36-3
No. of pages:
160
Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany and lives and works in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and then the Düsseldorf Art Academy. His work has been the subject of exhibitions internationally, including touring retrospectives at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others. Richter has experimented with photography, drawing, printing, sculpture and, notably, painting. Aided by the diversity of his media, the artist has continuously examined the nature of imagery, highlighting in particular the contingency of representation.
Essay by Marcus du Sautoy. Preface by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Bettina Korek
Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the Oxford University. He is also a Professor of Mathematics and a Fellow of New College. In 2004, Esquire Magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in Britain and in 2009 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Prize, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. He received an OBE for services to science in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List and the London Mathematical Society Zeeman Medal for 2014 for promotion of mathematics to the public.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London
Bettina Korek is CEO of the Serpentine Galleries in London