Günter Umberg
07 Nov 2008 - 31 Jan 2009
GÜNTER UMBERG
"Passage"
7 NOV 2008 – 31 JAN 2009
Opening: Thursday, 6 NOV 2008
7 p.m.
Introduction:
Jan Thorn-Prikker, cultural fournalist and independent art-critic
7.30 p.m.
Painting and the picture don’t bring any hing to awareness. Anyone who thinks that a making aware of tactile values is at issue here, or a particular nuancing of black or green, and anyone who believes he can gain certainty through seeing or even touching, is deceiving himself. Painted color occu s in the dissolution of all pictorial certainty. My painting demonstrates nothing. Instead it gives space to aroused perception. Günter Umberg, 2006
For almost thirty years Günter Umberg has been painting black pictures, sometimes green, on rare occasion orange ones. They unfold their haunting presence in the space, they vibrate on the walls, and their effect changes depending on the viewing angle and how close or far away the viewer is standing. Günter Umberg achieves the intensity of the color by applying multiple layers of pigment and damar resin. Umberg sees this repetition of the painting process – often up to a hundred times – as an existential state “so as to get closer to the color, beginning to move towards a picture” and “to transform material into a picture. When I talk about the closeness of a color, I am always also speaking about the closeness of a picture. To be more precise, that involves how a technical process becomes an intellectual process.”
Günter Umberg developed his particular manner of painting not in order to study the physical properties of color, but rather to define color in its property and meaning as the main medium of painting. “At the moment when I comprehend black as a pigment and the binder as a liquid without any quality of color, when I view both as separate items that have to be brought together, I generate what in painterly terms is a color.” In doing so, Umberg develops an intensive physical sense for color, he internalizes color from picture to picture.
Umberg’s dense and intensive paintings are by no means autonomous entities, they allow no distance between the work and the observer. They exist only in the direct physical relationship with the observer, who has a decisive part in giving the painting meaning. In this connection, seeing should not be subordinate to the thought processes; it should be more like assimilation. Günter Umberg uses architectural interventions to create a specific place. The process of entering this space, turning to the picture, the passage across the threshold into another, hidden world, is something Umberg refuses to leave up to a neutral, randomly found architecture; he wants to be the one to determine the possibilities of closeness and distance between the painting and the observer. “The observer must have a possibility of making free decisions in these rooms. The pictures must be presented there in such a way that this freedom is not restricted – and they must do justice to the space... If those conditions are present, space and picture can become a unique event.”
All quotations from: Günter Umberg /Jan Thorn-Prikker, “Black Sun – A conversation about the art of painting a black picture,” transl. by Tim Nevill, in Günter Umberg, House of Paintings, Shadow Space, ed. Brigitte Baumstark and Dorothea Strauss, Zurich 2006.
Günter Umberg, born in Bonn, Germany, in 1942, lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and Corberon, France. Exhibitions (selection): 1985 Städtische Galerie im Städel, Frankfurt/Main, Germany I 1986 P.S.1, Long Island, New York I 1990 Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany I 1991 Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany I 1992 Museum Moderner Kunst Landkreis Cuxhaven, Otterndorf, Germany I 1993 Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany I 1994 Aura, Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria 1997 Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts I 1998 Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium I 2000 Body of Painting, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany I 2005 Fred Thieler Award for Painting, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany I 2006 Städtische Galerie, Karlsruhe, Germany I 2006/2007 haus konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland.
"Passage"
7 NOV 2008 – 31 JAN 2009
Opening: Thursday, 6 NOV 2008
7 p.m.
Introduction:
Jan Thorn-Prikker, cultural fournalist and independent art-critic
7.30 p.m.
Painting and the picture don’t bring any hing to awareness. Anyone who thinks that a making aware of tactile values is at issue here, or a particular nuancing of black or green, and anyone who believes he can gain certainty through seeing or even touching, is deceiving himself. Painted color occu s in the dissolution of all pictorial certainty. My painting demonstrates nothing. Instead it gives space to aroused perception. Günter Umberg, 2006
For almost thirty years Günter Umberg has been painting black pictures, sometimes green, on rare occasion orange ones. They unfold their haunting presence in the space, they vibrate on the walls, and their effect changes depending on the viewing angle and how close or far away the viewer is standing. Günter Umberg achieves the intensity of the color by applying multiple layers of pigment and damar resin. Umberg sees this repetition of the painting process – often up to a hundred times – as an existential state “so as to get closer to the color, beginning to move towards a picture” and “to transform material into a picture. When I talk about the closeness of a color, I am always also speaking about the closeness of a picture. To be more precise, that involves how a technical process becomes an intellectual process.”
Günter Umberg developed his particular manner of painting not in order to study the physical properties of color, but rather to define color in its property and meaning as the main medium of painting. “At the moment when I comprehend black as a pigment and the binder as a liquid without any quality of color, when I view both as separate items that have to be brought together, I generate what in painterly terms is a color.” In doing so, Umberg develops an intensive physical sense for color, he internalizes color from picture to picture.
Umberg’s dense and intensive paintings are by no means autonomous entities, they allow no distance between the work and the observer. They exist only in the direct physical relationship with the observer, who has a decisive part in giving the painting meaning. In this connection, seeing should not be subordinate to the thought processes; it should be more like assimilation. Günter Umberg uses architectural interventions to create a specific place. The process of entering this space, turning to the picture, the passage across the threshold into another, hidden world, is something Umberg refuses to leave up to a neutral, randomly found architecture; he wants to be the one to determine the possibilities of closeness and distance between the painting and the observer. “The observer must have a possibility of making free decisions in these rooms. The pictures must be presented there in such a way that this freedom is not restricted – and they must do justice to the space... If those conditions are present, space and picture can become a unique event.”
All quotations from: Günter Umberg /Jan Thorn-Prikker, “Black Sun – A conversation about the art of painting a black picture,” transl. by Tim Nevill, in Günter Umberg, House of Paintings, Shadow Space, ed. Brigitte Baumstark and Dorothea Strauss, Zurich 2006.
Günter Umberg, born in Bonn, Germany, in 1942, lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and Corberon, France. Exhibitions (selection): 1985 Städtische Galerie im Städel, Frankfurt/Main, Germany I 1986 P.S.1, Long Island, New York I 1990 Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany I 1991 Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany I 1992 Museum Moderner Kunst Landkreis Cuxhaven, Otterndorf, Germany I 1993 Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany I 1994 Aura, Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria 1997 Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts I 1998 Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium I 2000 Body of Painting, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany I 2005 Fred Thieler Award for Painting, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany I 2006 Städtische Galerie, Karlsruhe, Germany I 2006/2007 haus konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland.