Publié en exclusivité à l'occasion de la rétrospective au Centre Pompidou, ce surprenant livre objet s'appuie sur la série d'oeuvres la plus récente de l'artiste et présentée lors de l'exposition. L'ouvrage s'ouvre sur un motif décoratif et procède à la simplification de cet élément jusqu'à une superposition de lignes. Le livre se compose d'une succession d'images qui permettront de plonger dans l'univers de l'artiste et d'en découvrir la démarche créative.

In his most recent artist's book Gerhard Richter documents Gerhard Richter's experiment of taking an image of his original Abstract Painting [CR: 724-4] and dividing it vertically into strips: first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, up to 4096 strips. This process (twelve stages of division) results in 8190 strips, each of which is the height of the original image. With each stage of division the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is 0.08 mm). Endless more divisions are possible, but they would soon only become visible by enlargement. Each strip is then mirrored and repeated, which results in patterns. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. The result of 221 listed patterns is published on 246 double page images.

The image of the original painting is divided vertically into 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096 strips. This process (twelve stages of division) results in 8190 strips, each of which is the height of the original image. With each stage of division the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is 0,80 mm). Infinitely more divions are possible, but they would become visible only by enlargement. Each strip is then mirrored and repeated which results in patterns. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. This publication presents the following 238 selected patterns on 244 double-page images.