Lot 640 D

Grid structures can also be seen in this seemingly monochrome painting by Günther Förg. A fine nuance of a lighter grey painted in horizontal and vertical brushstrokes of a rapid and emotional expression on a dark grey ground, so is the brief description. Behind this, however, as always with Förg, is a consideration of impulses, events 'in passing', so to speak. On the one hand, the grid as an auxiliary construction of craftsmanship, which, via the format, mentally expands into a formal monumentality. And on the other hand, the colour application of a perhaps melancholy rhetoric, which, however, can be spiritually charged into highly spherical spaces. The mysterious grid appears familiar in its function; but it is Förg who transforms this 'simple' pattern into the theme of the picture, charged with pathos. And perhaps it is particularly the 'Grid Paintings' that cannot always be precisely defined, but in their variety of formal possibilities of expression they generate a kind of mysterious framework for the artist, which he repeatedly uses in all media and techniques. The colour grey or, in comparison, the black in Ad Reinhardt's work, or the grey in Gerhard Richter's work, or the visionary grey in Förg's work: it is connected with the idea of reflecting the origin of painting - like a mirror.