Bad Honnef Multiple 1998

Gunther Forg made Bad Honnef Multiple with paint, building up texture with repeated gestures and a muted colour palette of greys and reds. It's all about the process. Look at the surface. See the way Forg built it up, layer by layer? The paint is mostly opaque, with the texture giving it depth, like a wall that's been painted over and over. The red squares in the corners give it some kind of structure. Notice the scratches, almost like graffiti, a mark of the artist's hand, a reminder that someone made this. It's rough and casual, more about attitude than finish. Forg was interested in the architecture of modernism, and you can see that in the geometric composition, but it's also subverted by the gestural mark-making, it reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, with a similar attitude to art as an ongoing conversation across time. It's all open to interpretation, isn't it?