ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Günther Förg
In his practice Günther Förg, who was highly inspired by Abstract influences and Modernism, has explored tangible ways of reflecting on materiality and on the gesture, using shapes and geometry in order to balance rational and irrational, the works of the mind and those of the gut, by tackling an array of mediums that include painting, sculpture and photography.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Massimo De Carlo Gallery Archive
The works in the exhibition “Förg” at Massimo De Carlo in Hong Kong mark a period in the Günther Förg’s life where he abandoned minimalism and Köln School structuralist inspired rigour to pursue the quest of pure abstraction, focusing on the painterly gesture, the brushstroke and spatiality. The exhibition focuses on a series of works on canvas that the artist commenced in 2007 where the element of colour, which the artist has investigated throughout his practice and expressed via different media, is key. The canvases in the exhibition are filled by a series of semi rectangular shapes, on a white back ground, that appear like islands of colours composed by scribbled lines, each shape in a different colour, varying from light pastel tones to bright and darker shades. The vibrant colour palette of these works allows colour itself to partially overcome the ever importance of the logical shapes, grids, squares, lines, conferring to the canvases an ethereal, almost fairy tale like character. Through these shapes, the artist combines the delicacy of the painterly gesture with the raging naïveté of doodles and scribbles, a contrast between the fragile and also uneasy movement and the meditative yet firm quality of the work. Förg offers a precious insight on the relationship each of us shares between the mind and the notion of colour, balanced between whimsicality and self-consciousness.
Info: Massimo De Carlo Gallery, 3d Floor Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration 27/5-3/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-19:00, http://massimodecarlo.com
