Günther Förg — Tupfenbilder

Günther Förg was a prolific painter, sculptor, graphic designer and photographer whose daring conceptual works incorporate and critique tropes of the sprawling movement known as modernism. This exhibition displays Förg’s Spot Paintings, the artist’s final series made between 2005 – 2010 before he stopped painting in 2010 after suffering a stroke. In these works, the brushstroke itself become the main protagonist, representing an ultimate return to expressive painting, indicating a completion of sorts—a full-circle arrival at painting as a synthesis of experimentation, rooted in art history. The Spot Paintings were partially influenced by photographs Förg saw of Francis Bacon’s studio, which was covered in colorful blotches of paint created when the artist would wipe his brushes on the walls and door of the studio to remove excess paint. The contrasting colors within a bustling composition reflects the conceptual principles that underpinned Förg’s practice: a formal purism, a sense of the artwork as object and an architectural, analytical interest in space.