Günther Förg’s “Works on Paper: 1976 – 2008” at the Greene Naftali Gallery

A seminal post-war German artist, Förg — who was a peer of Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen—maintained a uniquely interdisciplinary practice that positioned painting in dialogue with photography, sculpture, and architecture. Interested in investigating modernism and its legacy, Förg challenged artistic conventions, equally considering the pictorial field, the frame, and the physical space beyond it. Förg’s works on paper represent another discipline through which he examined these concerns.

Spanning over 30 years, the works on view demonstrate Förg’s active engagement with this medium, directly applying acrylic, oil, and gouache onto the surfaces of Canson, hand-made, or graph papers. Working in a range of scales, from the monumental to the intimate, Förg approached each with gestural fluency and an improvisational hand, addressing formal and chromatic relations on a two-dimensional surface. Geometrically partitioned fields of painted hues, magnified cross-hatches on gray surfaces, and colorful aggregations of tight, looping gestures are framed behind highly reflective glass—a tactic that Forg used to integrate the subject and his surroundings into the work.