Raphael Rack reacts with his painting of the LGBT murder in Orlando USA to one of the many worldwide terrorist massacres. The atrocity wiped out 49 lives. With his work the artist expresses both his shock and sympathy. The painting is a vivid wall of remembrance, a proclamation of elemental values. Rack starts out with yellow, brown, white and ocher representing the colors of the earth, the roots, the growth and bloom. The abstract color surfaces were filled with rainbow colors except for yellow, which was already present in the base layer. The rainbow colors, recognized colors of the gay and lesbian world, were then spread with an oversized blade onto a surface where emotions, thoughts and associations are connected.
The smoothening effect illustrates the eternal passing, thinking and acting through time. Scraping out from the lower layers the artist reveals the color yellow. It illuminates the flow of life with the many golden souls bubbling up. It seems we are all standing on this floating ribbon of life. These are floating islands, rising up like the song of a shining requiem – a subtle commemoration.
All of the artist’s paintings go beyond earthly restraints. With his picturesque vision Rack overcomes the unimaginable horror, the sadness. His image is less an epitaph, a tombstone with inscriptions, but a Utopia, to refine and improve the world. The “golden souls” are rising like an apotheosis from the extensive color dominant areas on the left and right thanks to the gestural dynamics and variability of the shapes. The simultaneous impression of all actions in one image creates an expressive yet informal statement of great density and intensity.
Color per se is numb. You can paint walls with it. The dynamic universal force is added by the artist. Raphael Rack adds companions to the color; it rotates, it swirls, scratching and pushing, and turns into a fluid in the flow of time. He transforms the horror into positive energies of hope. The freedom and illimitability of his art binds emotional divination, creates respect for people, for the murdered siblings “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. The painting expresses universal love, restoring the meaning of our existence.