Anselm Reyle, Tequila Sunrise

Opera Gallery is delighted to present ‘Tequila Sunrise’, Anselm Reyle’s first exhibition with Opera Gallery Madrid. Bringing together distinct yet interconnected bodies of work—Ceramics, Chrome Brush Strokes, Stripes, New Paintings, as well as Foils & Neons—the exhibition offers an overview of an artist whose practice has consistently challenged the conventions of abstraction through experimentation, material innovation and engagement with colour.

For more than three decades, Reyle has occupied a singular position within contemporary art. Drawing equally from the legacies of post-war abstraction, Pop Art and the visual language of consumer culture, he has developed a practice that transforms familiar materials into works of visual and conceptual complexity. Across painting, sculpture and installation, his work invites us to reconsider established hierarchies of beauty and artistic value.

Embracing Unpredictability: Ceramics

The exhibition opens with Reyle’s Ceramics, a body of work that emerged from a desire to embrace unpredictability and chance. Unlike the controlled surfaces often associated with his paintings, these sculptural forms bear the traces of transformation inherent to the firing process. Their volcanic textures, vivid glazes and monumental presence embody a spirit of experimentation that has defined the artist’s approach. Balancing refinement with spontaneity, they stand as physical manifestations of Reyle’s engagement with the tension between control and accident. 

Reimagining the Gesture: Chrome Brush Strokes

This dialogue continues in the Chrome Brush Strokes series, among Reyle’s most recent developments. The expressive gesture traditionally associated with painting is transformed into a sculptural element through chrome-plated forms mounted onto the canvas. What initially appears spontaneous reveals itself as carefully engineered, creating a tension between gesture and industrial production. The result is a body of work that celebrates and questions the mythology of the painterly mark.

Revisiting the Stripe

The Stripes and New Paintings revisit one of the artist’s most recognisable motifs. Rather than a return to familiar territory, these works demonstrate Reyle’s enduring capacity for reinvention. Bands of colour, reflective surfaces, varied textures and disruptions create compositions that oscillate between order and improvisation. Their visual rhythm recalls both the formal language of modernist abstraction and the seductive aesthetics of advertising and design, fields that have long informed the artist’s practice.

Transforming the Surface

Completing the exhibition, the Foil Paintings remain among Reyle’s most iconic achievements. Through the manipulation of crumpled metallic foil, encased and elevated within painterly compositions, the artist transforms discarded or industrial materials into luminous fields of colour and reflection. In several works, integrated neon elements further intensify this interplay of light and material, extending the paintings beyond their physical surfaces. The fluorescent glow in the Neon Foils activates the reflective foil, creating shifting visual experiences.

Material, Colour and Light

Throughout ‘Tequila Sunrise’, colour operates not only as a visual device but as a source of energy and transformation. Light is reflected, absorbed and refracted across surfaces, animating each work and creating a dynamic encounter with the visitor. Through this exhibition, the series of works reveals an artist who continues to expand the possibilities of abstraction, demonstrating that innovation often arises from the reimagining of what is already familiar.