12 - Günther Förg

Günther Förg Untitled 2004 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 140 cm. Signed and dated 'Förg 04'. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age. The present work is registered in the Günther Förg Archive, Münchenstein. Provenance Galerie Hans Strelow, Dusseldorf; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia In this painting from 2004, a few light lines on a black background are enough to suggest the corner of a room. In the upper left area, green paint has been drawn deep into the picture with a broad brush, while a red field of colour has been applied at centre right. The signature is written in white in the upper right corner of the painted wall. “Such formal or material decisions were an important aspect of Förg’s work, but he was as much concerned with its relation to architectural space: how the structural apparatus of walls, floors, doorways, windows, and interior detailing provides a framework within which the paintings act. Here, Förg learnt from his Minimalist predecessors, embracing what Michael Fried had disparaged as the work’s ‘literalist’ tendency and inherent theatricality.” (Kirsty Bell, Günther Förg and the Edges of the Visual Field, in: Günther Förg, A Fragile Beauty, exhib.cat., Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas 2018, p.217) In his exhibitions, Förg combined architectural photographs with monochrome murals, thereby bringing depicted and real space into contact with one another. In this painting, he transfers this relationship to the canvas: he paints the space, and the fields of colour appear within as paintings on the wall, just like his murals in real space. Line, plane, space: using minimal means, Förg combines drawing, painting, and architecture into an image of serene clarity.