Ralph Richter

Ralph Richter is a German contemporary mixed-media artist working between painting, relief and object. Born in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1962, he trained as a carpenter and founded his own workshop in 1989. His long engagement with wood, construction and surface became the material foundation of his later artistic practice.

Since 2019, Richter has developed a distinctive process he calls Pressage, using printed newspaper, printing ink and solid wood to create relief-like pictorial objects. His work explores the relationship between transience and permanence, information and memory, material fragility and physical presence.

Richter lives and works in Lübeck, Germany.

Artist Statement

Newspapers are made for the present moment. Their images and stories circulate for a short time before becoming yesterday's information. The paper itself is likewise transient: it ages, fades, and disappears.

Ralph Richter uses this fragile material as the starting point of his work. In his technique of pressage, he transfers fragments of printed newspaper onto solid wood. During this process of transformation, the original information increasingly loses its legibility. Text becomes structure, images become color, and news becomes material traces.

The resulting works move between painting, relief, and object. The wood lends physical presence and permanence to what was originally ephemeral.

Richter's works are therefore concerned less with preserving information than with transforming its traces. Out of yesterday's news emerge images for tomorrow — image-bodies that strive to endure through time.