Günther Förg
Brimming with both visual immediacy and painterly nuance Günther Förg’s handle on abstraction has reinvigorated formalist approaches to painting in an unmistakably contemporary environment. Building on an austere and subtly defined, grey ground, Förg has defiantly imposed feverish cross-hatchings of crimson red paint. In places the textures and colours appear to coalesce but in others they dissociate entirely resulting in a picture plane that refuses to sit still. Likewise, where alternations of light and dark suggest depth, the gestural brutality and rigid composition of red paint asserts flatness. This is a fearless painting. One that builds on the existing stylistic qualities of other great German painters yet affirms itself as utterly new. Within this work one can find the confrontational patterning of Georg Baselitz, the ethereal enigmaticness of Gerhard Richter, the historical irreverence of Albert Oehlen and the uncompromising chromatic proximities of Hans Hoffman, all battling for relevance in a work that evidently establishes its own.
