After a few experimental attempts, Richter began to discover the technique of reverse glass painting in 2008 and to use it for his paintings of controlled chance. The series of paintings "Sindbad" (2008), "Aladin", "Baghdad", "Ifrit", "Perizade" and "Abdallah" (each 2010) are created, all of whose titles have their origins in the rich culture of the Orient. Richter borrowed these titles from the figures of Islamic mythology and the famous collection of fairy tales "1001 Nights", which was translated from Middle Persian into Arabic in Baghdad around the year 800 and from then on became widespread in oriental and later also in occidental culture. It is certainly no coincidence that Richter placed this thematic world of the flourishing West alongside his abstract creations at a time when the Orient was being marked by war and the devastation of the Iraq war. Gerhard Richter is not only a master of painterly experimentation in the field of tension between calculation and chance, but also a master of playing with free association. Richter's oriental titles give the viewer space to associate the bright, abstract color gradients with the bright colors of the Orient or their finely structured movement, fixed behind glass, with the formal repertoire of Arabic calligraphy. And finally, an association with the uncontrolled chaos of the destruction of war cannot be ruled out. Richter declares the luminous, abstract color structures, which are the result of his masterly staging of calculated coincidence, to be the protagonists of his composition, which is placed on the back of the picture carrier and is therefore fascinatingly enraptured. For this impressive result, Richter first lets the paint flow onto a Plexiglas support and only partially intervenes in this accidental process of image formation through the use of brushes, chopsticks and spatulas. Finally, Richter transfers the desired section of the resulting composition to the glass plate using a perfected copying process, which ultimately permanently preserves these marbled color structures. [JS]