GÜNTHER FÖRG. ALLER RETOUR

GÜNTHER FÖRG (1952-2013)

Colour management

Finalized over the latter part of this summer, the direct reproduction of Günther Förg’s follow-up volume with over 100 pastels is simply breathtaking. The artist has responded with soft, schematic surfaces upon colour field compositions made up of hard lines. When he fixes the sheet and shakes off the residual pigment, it leaves a very fine, scarcely perceptible veil over the work. Thus from time to time the palette of colour oscillates in a most remarkable way from heavy to light via bright and crazy to bulging and full. This is what a confident approach to surfaces looks like—at times he rounds them off with bold, almost hectic-looking spots, another time he allows them to expand majestically into a broad, white tonal field. The resulting pastels come in three formats and cajole the observer’s eye to flit perpetually to and fro: only the eye—ever the quick-thinking hand as it flicks back and forth from page to page to make sure, to compare remembering with seeing, perceiving with surety—can tell its story when the pastels take up a double page and follow on one after another. For it is precisely at this point that Günther Förg’s abstraction in its most extreme form captivates each and every concentration.