Günther Förg: Back and Forth

Back and Forth The 100 plus new abstract canvases, carefully reproduced in this book with its unusual format, are the result of one of the most intensive phases of work by Günther Förg in recent years, which took place between Autumn 2008 and Spring 2009. The artist places a sequence of calculated colour fields into a basic grid, which changes from format to format, each individual painting having its own tonal rhythm characterised in turn by a high degree of physical concentration. It is then no coincidence that Rudi Fuchs’ linguistically stirring yet acutely observed text discerns an affinity between this work and Piet Mondrians’s last und most unusual painting, »Victory Boogie Woogie«. However, the way the palette of colours is organised, supplemented by the structure of each individual colour field, substantially differentiates Günther Förg’s endeavour from that his predecessor. In fact it is the free flow of the brushstrokes, the delicate upward and more forceful downward movement alongside the choice of colours, which together propel each individual composition beyond the scope of all previously known abstraction. Or as Rudi Fuch’s puts it: »Whether he painted vibrating colour fields, irregular grids comprising raw, fibrous lines, he always had clever interruptive strategies in the implementation. Figuration had to give way in order to release the primordial energy of the brushstroke in its purest form: vigorous abstraction«.