Lot 638 D

The artist began working intensively with the vulnerability of nature and people and portraying their relationships with each other from the 1970s. In 'Wald' (Wood), Günther Uecker worked with branches which he twisted away from their direction of growth. The natural materials were fixed with nails which sometimes appeared as a further bifurcation of the branch whilst the black lines added along some branches served to thicken Uecker's wood. The work clearly presents a dichotomy of the materiality which at the same time only creates an impressive effect as a result of their combination. ''Uecker cannot resolve them in justified human existence and the visualised contradictions and tensions in his work. His works always reflect dualistic principles: on the one hand grief, destruction, despair and threat, and on the other humanity, love, redemption and hope, whereby his view of the world is fundamentally characterised by humanistic-idealistic ideas. With the help of art, Uecker will lead consciousness to another reality; the artwork however shouldn't be the direct visualisation of a new world, but rather merely a tool for the processes of experience and thinking and a parable for a spiritual development. In this sense his works are understood as materialising traces penetrating another reality into the everday world. With the reality of the artwork, according to his conclusion, a new dimension outside of the historical location of humankind should open up which frees itself from the actual as well as imagined objectivity of the old world.'' (Richard W. Gassen, Unsichtbar Sichtbares sichtbar machen, Kontinuität und Transmutation im Werk der 80er Jahre, in: Richard W. Gassen et.al. (ed.), exhib.cat. Wilhelm-Hack-Museum 1987, Heidelberg 1987, p. 46)