Untitled

After pursuing a purely photographic practice for several years during the early 1980s, Förg entered a new phase of experimentation later in the decade, which brought him back to painting. Fuelled by his interest in and thorough study of several artists he admired, ranging from Edvard Munch to Clyfford Still, Förg began to deploy and abstract their techniques. Munch was particularly instrumental for the development of the ‘Grid Paintings.’ Inspired by the unusual crosshatching in the fore- and background of Munch’s ‘Death of Marat’ (1907), Förg’s ‘Grid Paintings’ abstract a specific element of the Norwegian artist’s work, pushing the gesture to its limits and producing a more free-flowing and unrestricted ‘grid.’ In ‘Untitled,’ the grid is rendered with a gestural fluency and improvisational hand that creates a dynamic interplay between color and the painted picture plane. The magenta bursts of color in the left half of ‘Untitled’ meanwhile illustrate how the ‘Grid Paintings’ slowly morphed into Förg’s ‘Spot Paintings,’ the artist’s last series before he was taken ill. Förg’s grids embrace spontaneity and irregularity, with overlapping and interwoven forms drawing us into his gridlocked canvas, which is at once inviting and closed off.