White Cube Mason’s Yard is presenting an exhibition of paintings by the late German artist Günther Förg (1952 – 2013). One of the key artists of his generation, Förg’s fluid, multidisciplinary practice spanned more than thirty years and included paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and wall paintings. This exhibition focuses on his most well-known works, the lead paintings, which he began making in the early 1980s. While Förg’s work reflects the aesthetic legacy of Modernism, connecting in particular to the painting of Mark Rothko, Brice Marden and Barnett Newman, he resists their metaphysical aspirations, incorporating references to more formal and architectural concerns. As Paul Schimmel observed, ‘Förg makes formal work which seems to eschew formalism and even undermine its purity’, creating spatially-orientated, ambiguous objects that appear freed from the physical limitations of their
