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This winter season, Hauser & Wirth brings the work of Günther Förg (1952 – 2013), one of the most significant post-war German artists, to Tarmak22 in Gstaad. The presentation focuses on the later years of Förg’s artistic production and draws on the relationship between works spanning from 1997 to 2009. On view are photographs, acrylic paintings, and works on paper, bringing together the various aspects of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. Taken in the Swiss alps in the winter of 1997, the photographs in the exhibition depict landscapes covered in snow and were the source of inspiration for Förg’s series ‘mostly landscapes’, created more than a decade later in 2009, and are presented side-by-side for the first time in this exhibition. Mostly Landscapes at Tarmak22 coincides with Günther Förg. Appearance’ at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, the first solo exhibition of the artist in Los Angeles.

Throughout his life, Förg moved between different materials in a series of sustained investigations, with one body of work influencing the next. Born in the region of Allgäu, Germany, Günther Förg’s career began in the early 1970s as a student at The Academy of Fine Art Munich. During his studies, Förg painted abstract works almost exclusively in grey and black monochrome, experimenting with different surfaces, patina and gestural mark-making.

In the 1980s, Förg began exploring new mediums to make works. In particular, he employed photography to reveal geometric forms within everyday life. Included in the exhibition are Förg’s large-format photographs of winter landscapes taken in Switzerland in 1997. Photographed whilst riding in a carriage through a valley in the Swiss Alps, these black and white works look beyond nature and at linear forms in the surroundings, evoking the monochrome palette of his early works and the gestural marks visible in his paintings. Interested in the structure and form of nature, these photographs went on to influence the motifs Förg would later employ in his work.

Images
Courtesy Estate Günther Förg, Suisse and Hauser & Wirth
© 2021 Estate Günther Förg, Suisse/Pro Litteris