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Exhibitions
- Günther Förg
Cuarenta / Fourty / Vierzig
29/02/2016 - 09/04/2016
Form and subject are two of the backbones of painting. And at the same time they constitute key parts of the work of Günther Förg. Yet they do not do so as unrelated and independent aspects, but as an aesthetic and conceptual meeting point. Purely formal construction obeys the subject while the latter, theme and content, respond to form. And this is exactly what one perceives on taking in this new exhibition by Günther Förg at the Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt. While in the five previous solo shows in Madrid, starting back in 1998, the main attention was focussed on a highly specific body of work, whether pictorial or photographic, on this occasion the coming together of 40 canvasses is the result of an unprecedented system. This is an exhibition in which each of the works, rather than belonging to a stylistic approach or defined period in Förg’s work, unveils itself in relation to the methods and procedures developed by the artist between 2002 and 2003.
As if it were a turning point, the paintings he carried out during those two years constitute both a conclusion and a preliminary sketch. A conclusion because, although some of the subjects associated with certain forms had been developed in his earlier works, it was now that they found their point of greatest intensity, and a preliminary sketch because this period was in itself the point of departure for some of the aspects that his painting would turn to years later. It is as such that, in this exhibition, we find ourselves faced with an extremely precise body of work that is not, however, one-directional. A body of work which, rather, stands as the crossroads where a large part of the essence of his painting evolved and which, in an interweaving manner, progressively sets out the forms and subjects which he would subsequently unravel, come back to and develop in greater depth.
The exhibition acts here as a string tied up into a bow, the two ends of which one can pull to undo and untie the enigmas of the paintings. As such, organised according to formal and thematic nexuses arranged on the different walls of the gallery, we encounter Förg’s varying approaches to addressing painting: windows – which constitute primordial matters in his work, such as paintings within paintings or seeing and being seen, or the dichotomy between inside and outside – the warp and weft and network of lines – which on certain occasions diverge into coloured gestures and fields, while on others occasions tend towards regular and geometric compositions – influences and references which build up a way of revisiting painting – with examples characteristic of Philip Guston or Clifford Still – and, finally, those loose ends which, through a subject that is more unprecedented or removed than is normally expected of him, or otherwise through a series of formal schematics that do not respond to more recognisable aspects (even approaching specific motifs whose either more or less figurative reflection is transformed into a painting) stand here now as extraordinary peculiarities which only go to highlight, even further, the enormous intensity of a pictorial body of work which now, in the gallery, is spread out as an explosive composition, unfurling itself upward and downward, and from one side to the other, demanding that painting be seen and thought. In its subjects and its forms.