Günther Förg
Günther Förg
Untitled
2002
Acrylic on canvas Approx. 51.5 x 59.5 cm. Framed under glass in display case.. Signed and dated 'Förg 02'. - Mounted verso on wood.
We would like to thank Michael Neff from the Günther Förg Estate for kindly confirming the authenticity of this work.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
The handling of the motif of the window, its lattice structure and the inherent ambivalence of inside and outside, light and dark, transparency and impermeability, characterises not only the window pictures that Günther Förg created from 1985 onwards, but also his architectural photography. In his photographic documentations of iconic modernist buildings, he explores their structural peculiarities in an intuitive way and with the trained eye of a painter.
Conversely, in this significant window painting, he stages a simple mullioned window in the style of a documentary and with compositional stringency but with the freestyle of a painter. The illuminated window surface allows neither a view into an interior nor into an exterior space and neither does it reflect any interior or exterior. The window, the frame and the surrounding black wall section have been detached from their architectural context and have become a seemingly weightless expression of unadulterated painting. The window, which according to its function should allow an unrestricted view, becomes a hermetically closed surface, the spatial situation becomes a two-dimensional foil, the question of inside and outside remains unanswered.