Seascape (Seestück), 1998. Oil on canvas, 9 feet 6 1/8 inches x 9 feet 6 1/8 inches (290 x 290 cm). Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa  GBM2001.3. © Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter's paintings have been referred to as models of perception. Indeed, his work is as much about the act of looking as any other subject. In his photo-based works, Richter combines various tropes of painting and photography to create a kind of representational problem: how and when does the eye sense the difference between a painted surface and the photographically recorded? In Richter's seemingly conventional yet large-scale Seestück (Seascape, 1998), the pigment is thinly applied, resulting in a surface that emulates the flatness of a photograph. And, like a snapshot might be, it is blurred. Here, the visual becomes conceptual, as Richter literally obscures the distinction between the photographic and the painted. Seascape, which also recalls the moody, atmospheric landscapes of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, is the first work by Richter to enter Bilbao's collection.