.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
'When I use nails my aim is to establish a structured pattern of relationships in order to set vibrations in motion that disturb and irritate their geometric order. What is important to me is variability, which is capable of revealing the beauty of movement to us'.
(Uecker, quoted in Gunther Ueckier: Twenty Chapters, Berlin 2006, p. 34.)
Gunther Uecker, who was born in Wendorf in Mecklenburg, Germany, in 1930, came of artistic age in Berlin and lived in New York in the mid-1960s, took inspiration from Kandinsky's cosmic abstractions and Vladimir Mayakovsky's injunction that, 'Poetry is made with a hammer.' Throughout the 1950s, Uecker sought out philosophies that he felt preached simplicity and purity, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam. His fascination with purification rituals, such as the Gregorian chant, led him to engage in his own rituals of repetition, such as the hammering of nails for extended periods of time. In 1961 Uecker joined Zero, an artists' group that aimed to establish a new beginning in art and culture, founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack: the name relates to the last point in a countdown before a rocket is launched. Uecker, along with the other Zero artists, wanted to return art to a 'zero base,' giving it a fresh start after World War II. The artist hoped viewers of his art would be open to new levels of perception and consciousness through a concrete experience with the work.
Exposure to Yves Klein's monochromes in 1957 inspired Uecker to blanket his paintings in an even, white paint, transforming the works into luminous light structures. In that same year he made his first monochrome relief structures with nails leading to works such as the present lot. His characteristic reliefs are more akin to sculpture than painting: their jutting nails and other objects create patterns of light and shadow upon the surfaces of the canvases. 'My works acquire their reality through light,' Uecker has commented. 'Their intensity is changeable due to the light impinging on them which, from the viewer's standpoint, is variable.' (Uecker quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p.28) Thus the surfaces of Uecker's paintings are intrinsically dynamic and ever-changing, paradoxical in that their static forms render ceaseless and fluid movement.
(Uecker, quoted in Gunther Ueckier: Twenty Chapters, Berlin 2006, p. 34.)
Gunther Uecker, who was born in Wendorf in Mecklenburg, Germany, in 1930, came of artistic age in Berlin and lived in New York in the mid-1960s, took inspiration from Kandinsky's cosmic abstractions and Vladimir Mayakovsky's injunction that, 'Poetry is made with a hammer.' Throughout the 1950s, Uecker sought out philosophies that he felt preached simplicity and purity, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam. His fascination with purification rituals, such as the Gregorian chant, led him to engage in his own rituals of repetition, such as the hammering of nails for extended periods of time. In 1961 Uecker joined Zero, an artists' group that aimed to establish a new beginning in art and culture, founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack: the name relates to the last point in a countdown before a rocket is launched. Uecker, along with the other Zero artists, wanted to return art to a 'zero base,' giving it a fresh start after World War II. The artist hoped viewers of his art would be open to new levels of perception and consciousness through a concrete experience with the work.
Exposure to Yves Klein's monochromes in 1957 inspired Uecker to blanket his paintings in an even, white paint, transforming the works into luminous light structures. In that same year he made his first monochrome relief structures with nails leading to works such as the present lot. His characteristic reliefs are more akin to sculpture than painting: their jutting nails and other objects create patterns of light and shadow upon the surfaces of the canvases. 'My works acquire their reality through light,' Uecker has commented. 'Their intensity is changeable due to the light impinging on them which, from the viewer's standpoint, is variable.' (Uecker quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p.28) Thus the surfaces of Uecker's paintings are intrinsically dynamic and ever-changing, paradoxical in that their static forms render ceaseless and fluid movement.