Hot-selling, prolific, and critically acclaimed Leipzig painter Neo Rauch presents 14 beguiling works painted for para, the third exhibition at the Met dedicated to mid-career artists. In densely populated canvases, Rauch arranges his figures — modeled on socialist laborers — as if they were objects. Distorting perspective and scale, Rauch establishes interactions popping with potential energy, like the mismatched embrace in Vater (Father) , in which a well-appointed, cross-eyed man cradles a shrunken, mustachioed figure in his rubbery, yellow hands. In Goldgrube (Gold Mine) , glowing ochres and muddy reds ominously frame workers loading a cow's skull into a wheelbarrow; elsewhere, in Vorort (Suburb) , pockets of flame surround — but can't quite ruffle — a flag-bearing crowd. These potent, uncanny images free figurative painting from socialist realism's categorical, politicized messages but nightmarishly mock interpretation.

-ASA

An exhibition catalogue has been published by DuMont.