Günther Förg: Wandmalerei / Wall Paintings 1978–2013

A first summary insight into a fundamental and at the same time extremely extensive aspect of the work

When Günther Förg died on 5 December 2013, he had been working intensively on a catalogue raisonné of his murals that same year, but was no longer able to complete it. Günther Förg's murals are one of the central aspects of his entire artistic oeuvre. They opened up many different presentation possibilities for him, could be combined with photographic and painterly works and were always intended as a clarification of the space, as a source of rhythm for its inner structure. He was in no way inferior to his great historical predecessors, whether Malevich, Rothko or Palermo, in his light-footed appropriation, and was perhaps even superior to them from time to time. In any case, quite a few of his fellow artists of the same age envy him today for when and how he knew how to deal with individual rooms and entire spaces with aplomb. In 1986, Max Wechsler wrote in the newspaper "Vaterland" on the occasion of Günther Förg's exhibition at the Bern Kunsthalle that "spatial design and image presentation interpenetrate quite naturally. Initially, the rooms exude a cool, almost design-like elegance that emphasises the unique architecture of the Kunsthalle and invites visitors to take a kind of stroll. Gradually, however, the calculation of the staging becomes effective and the exaggerated presence of the rooms begins to radiate, opening up other spaces: Insights and views. Structures become effective, moods are conjured up and feelings are aroused; a complex system of relationships opens up, simultaneously breaking up and holding the whole together."
The present volume now takes up the artist's notebooks and facsimiles them. A catalogue raisonné must be reserved for later, careful scholarly work. What this publication aims to do, however, is to provide an initial summary insight into this fundamental and at the same time extremely extensive aspect of his work. To this end, Günther Förg's handwritten corrections to the data sheets have been carefully facsimiled and some sheets have been supplemented with almost identical colour samples.

Exhibition:
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 31/7 - 25/10/2015