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Lot Essay
'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' (G. Uecker quoted in D. Honisch (a.o.), Günther Uecker: Twenty Chapters, Berlin 2006, p. 34).
German Zero artist Günther Uecker started creating his nailed paintings in 1957. For him, the nail-covered surface is a sort of antithesis of the painted surface, as is his dominant preference for the colour white. His use of a monochrome colour and his occupancy with a monotonous material in repetitive exercises, enabled him during his career to develop a fascination for the medium of light. The nails arranged in all sorts of intervals, rhythms, organic patrons and sequences and their shadows, give the artist the opportunity to explore all sorts of light arrangements. The viewer is, depending on his position and time of day, confronted with a different and unique work every time.
Executed in 1960-1961, Horizontal Alignment, diagonally disturbed is an early and deeply hypnotic work by Günther Uecker, dating from the artist's most exciting period. This example of Uecker's iconic form is remarkable in the quality of the forms on display: light as it passes through and over the relief, breaking into shadows that momentarily transform the work and presents the viewer a stunningly seductive optical experience. The resulting virginal, luminous aesthetic served to heighten the effect of light as it passes through and over the relief, breaking into shadows that momentarily transform the work. As Uecker has described 'my works acquire their reality through light... their intensity is changeable due to the light impinging on them which, from the viewer's standpoint, is variable' (G. Uecker quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p. 28). It is this optical effect that invites the viewer's eye to roam across the surface of the work, seeking new relationships between volume and shadow.
Uecker became signatory to the Zero Group in 1961 where he was introduced to the visual practices of fellow artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Together, their monochromatic works were each aimed at creating dynamic optical vibrations. Although the group was disbanded only a few years later in 1966, the experience had been a formative one for the artist: 'it was from the start an open domain of possibilities, and we speculated with the visionary form of purity, beauty, and stillness. These things moved us greatly. This was perhaps also a very silent and at the same time very loud protest against Expressionism, against an expression-oriented society' (G. Uecker, ibid, p. 14). At the time, West Germany was becoming dominated by a prevailing Expressionism or Art Informel, and it was against this prevailing vernacular that Uecker sought to find a new artistic "base". He looked back to the time of the Russian revolution populated by artists such as Kazimir Malevich whose clean, Suprematist paintings, with their metaphors of nothingness, 'made it possible to feel more optimistic about one's own way' (G. Uecker, ibid, p. 26). Going beyond the catharsis of Germany's recent national socialist legacy, Uecker was seeking the same aim as his Russian forebear: 'the creation of 'white states' such as society had not yet attained' (ibid).
German Zero artist Günther Uecker started creating his nailed paintings in 1957. For him, the nail-covered surface is a sort of antithesis of the painted surface, as is his dominant preference for the colour white. His use of a monochrome colour and his occupancy with a monotonous material in repetitive exercises, enabled him during his career to develop a fascination for the medium of light. The nails arranged in all sorts of intervals, rhythms, organic patrons and sequences and their shadows, give the artist the opportunity to explore all sorts of light arrangements. The viewer is, depending on his position and time of day, confronted with a different and unique work every time.
Executed in 1960-1961, Horizontal Alignment, diagonally disturbed is an early and deeply hypnotic work by Günther Uecker, dating from the artist's most exciting period. This example of Uecker's iconic form is remarkable in the quality of the forms on display: light as it passes through and over the relief, breaking into shadows that momentarily transform the work and presents the viewer a stunningly seductive optical experience. The resulting virginal, luminous aesthetic served to heighten the effect of light as it passes through and over the relief, breaking into shadows that momentarily transform the work. As Uecker has described 'my works acquire their reality through light... their intensity is changeable due to the light impinging on them which, from the viewer's standpoint, is variable' (G. Uecker quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p. 28). It is this optical effect that invites the viewer's eye to roam across the surface of the work, seeking new relationships between volume and shadow.
Uecker became signatory to the Zero Group in 1961 where he was introduced to the visual practices of fellow artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Together, their monochromatic works were each aimed at creating dynamic optical vibrations. Although the group was disbanded only a few years later in 1966, the experience had been a formative one for the artist: 'it was from the start an open domain of possibilities, and we speculated with the visionary form of purity, beauty, and stillness. These things moved us greatly. This was perhaps also a very silent and at the same time very loud protest against Expressionism, against an expression-oriented society' (G. Uecker, ibid, p. 14). At the time, West Germany was becoming dominated by a prevailing Expressionism or Art Informel, and it was against this prevailing vernacular that Uecker sought to find a new artistic "base". He looked back to the time of the Russian revolution populated by artists such as Kazimir Malevich whose clean, Suprematist paintings, with their metaphors of nothingness, 'made it possible to feel more optimistic about one's own way' (G. Uecker, ibid, p. 26). Going beyond the catharsis of Germany's recent national socialist legacy, Uecker was seeking the same aim as his Russian forebear: 'the creation of 'white states' such as society had not yet attained' (ibid).