As in prior pieces, Rappenecker draws on the worlds of mass media and consumerism as his sources. The "Subtitles" originate in moving images, that is to say in movies, whereby Rappenecker does not confine himself to only one genre. He takes stills from the movies, complete with the accompanying English subtitles, and then alters the frames using a computer. The fundamental change he makes is that he sets the frozen images in abrupt virtual motion before freezing them once again. The result are completely abstract, amorphous or geometric images - with colors and shapes that visually and conceptually are reminiscent of the tradition of color field paintings and Abstract Expressionism. The subtitles retained always refer to the particular film scene - and are certainly at exciting odds with the finished product.
Unlike his earlier work series entitled "Screen Paintings", where the original picture was still unequivocally discernible, in "Subtitles" the semantic and significative context of the original narrative "messages" is dissolves - so that the viewer enters a completely new world and a faces a broad range of associations.
The highly colorful products are not painted on canvas but instead are photographic prints. They are understood in terms of both contents and technology as a link to our age, characterized on the one hand by cool rationalism and the aesthetics of the entertainments industry and, on the other, by emotions, desires and myths.