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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jun 5, 2019 | Dorotheum | Vienna | Contemporary Art I | 225 | $****** - ****** | Reihung |
paintings
102.5 x 102.5 x 9 cm (40.35 x 40.35 x 3.54 in)
nails, graphite on canvas on wood
titled, signed, dated, inscribed on the reverse Uecker 70, HAUT OBEN, and with directional arrow
Private Collection, Düsseldorf – directly from the artist
titled, signed, inscribed on the reverse Uecker 70, SKULL UP, with arrow, nails, graphite on canvas, 102.5 x 102.5 x 9 cm
Provenance:
Private Collection, Dusseldorf - directly from the artist
This work is registered in the Uecker Archive under number GU.70.104 and will be referred for inclusion in the forthcoming
Uecker Catalog Raisonné.
"My attempt to activate a real space through structuring rows, to allow the
observer to experience it as a condition of pure aesthetics. When I use nails as structural elements
I do not want them to be understood as nails. What I'm trying to do is to vibrate by using these materials in an orderly relationship to one another, one that disturbs the geometric order and may even irritate. "
The Beauty of the Movement, 1961, in Günther Uecker, Schriften, 1979, p. 105
To make the development of a movement visible as a dynamic state is a
significant action. It is not a matter of routine but fertile in its repetition,
in its very monotony, like the experience of prayer.
My objects constitute a spatial reality, a zone of light.
I use the means of technology to overcome the personal gesture,
to objectify, to create conditions for freedom.
Günther Uecker, in: ZERO 3, Düsseldorf 1961; Reprint ZERO 1-3, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene,
Cologne 1973, p. 220
The works of Günther Uecker from 1970 Convey more clearly than those of the other artists from his circle of the 1960s and the 1970s. Already in 1970, Günther Uecker was the only one to take a stance against the formalism of the 1960s, a stance which declared to be a field of free, human activity. The goal is not the work of art in itself, but rather the acting, self-realizing artist. The newly won Freedom from formal or visual constraints thus clearly manifests itself in the spontaneously agitated fields of nails and nail-objects which were created after 1970.
The "alignment" is one of the numerous ideas of this period which Günther Uecker realized; his endeavor was successful, and he just went back to the already developed basic forms only to vary them, but instead he has completely new and fresh impulses into his work. Günther Uecker, and in his friends he found active supporters, not only with regard to the solution of technical problems but in their artisanal execution.
The "Reihung" is a work which was constructed with the greatest attention to detail. Günther Uecker applies a geometric linear grid to the white-painted canvas; Günther Uecker uses the nail to mark a spot between the polarized principles of light and shade which represent permanent healing, re-creation and purity, as well as destruction, death and darkness. Günther Uecker's nail reliefs directly and genuinely reflect the energetic reality of light and the four elements, along with the kinetic reality of movement. The work's intensity changes with the light striking the 1089 nails and is affected by the viewer's position.
The long shadows of the nails expand the work into a constantly changing, three-dimensional object. The relief turns into a concrete image space; it fills the space with its boundaries becoming less and less clearly defined. The structure of the work is rendered as a result of the various ways that light can hit the image medium. Günther Uecker is supposed to complete the work itself.
The exact, rhythmic alternation of nails and open spaces, which, according to the light and the position of the viewer, is opened, which seemingly causes the picture to vibrate , although in fact everything remains static.
