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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Günther Förg, Untitled, 1988

Günther Förg

Untitled, 1988
Acrylic on wood in the artist's frame, in five parts
Panel, each:
26 5/8 x 20 5/8 inches
67.6 x 52.4 cm
Framed, each:
27 3/8 x 21 5/8 inches
69.5 x 54.9 cm
(i) dated and inscribed on verso: 1988 1
(ii) dated and inscribed on verso: 1988 2
(iii) dated and inscribed on verso: 88 3
(iv) dated and inscribed on verso: 88 4
(v) signed and dated twice on verso: 88 Förg 88
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In this series of five acrylic paintings on panel, Günther Förg's invocation of high modernist aesthetics and techniques—fields of color and expressive and repetitive brushwork—are a somewhat sardonic attempt to...
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In this series of five acrylic paintings on panel, Günther Förg's invocation of high modernist aesthetics and techniques—fields of color and expressive and repetitive brushwork—are a somewhat sardonic attempt to reinhabit the husk of modernism from a privileged vantage point, one with the benefit of hindsight. This quintet of paintings exhibits contrasting monochromatic sections bisecting the composition of each panel. Förg often employed a strict repetition of forms to underscore a constant desire to erode the primacy of the individual artwork as an object of study, and by extension, the originality of the artist’s hand. Across all of Förg’s work, his approach to abstraction can be characterized as a cunning appraisal of the conceptual and political limits of the material specificity adhered to by American abstract painters of the mid-century. Superficially, Förg's paintings appear to seek the same certainty as those of the Color Field painters of of the previous generation, but instead, doubt reveals itself as the wellspring of his rigor. Förg believed high modernist abstraction set the perfect stage for an unflinching reinvestigation of the prevailing ideology imbedded in this highly mythologized moment of art history. By pantomiming as a believer a generation later, Förg unlocked a bold critique of his predecessors. This reflexivity and historicity classify his work as a bridge from the modern to the postmodern—a word most useful when defined as the postscript to, and the continued development of, the modern.

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Provenance

The artist;
[Galerie Pierre Huber, Geneva, Switzerland]; to
Lambert Art Collection, Switzerland, 1989; to
[Sale: Christie's, London, October 14, 2015, lot 9]; to
Private collection, Texas, until the present
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