Gebrochenes Kontinuum 1975

Curator: Here, we see Gunter Fruhtrunk's "Gebrochenes Kontinuum," created in 1975. Editor: Stark. The diagonal lines of bright green, white, and black—they create a very assertive and destabilizing optical experience. Curator: Indeed. Fruhtrunk was deeply invested in the interplay of color and form. He used the stencil medium here, quite deliberately, to explore hard-edged abstraction and the disruption of continuous visual planes. Note how the seemingly regular pattern is deliberately fractured. Editor: The title tells it all: broken continuity. But the break also highlights the artifice. You see the deliberate choices. What sort of stencils would've been necessary to achieve that kind of precise segmentation? What does it mean to apply an almost industrial mode of production to something we conventionally regard as art? Curator: That rigid precision also reflects Fruhtrunk's deep engagement with geometric abstraction, connecting him to earlier movements, such as De Stijl, as he explored how minimalist forms trigger complex perceptions. The intense chromatic contrast furthers that disruption of the eye's normal processing of spatial relations. Editor: And these aren't naturally occurring hues. That vivid green—it's fabricated, synthetic, the kind you'd see on machinery or coded diagrams. Makes me consider how industrial production affects our perception of color, how synthetic color pervades our environment. The artist's involvement seems almost that of an engineer… Curator: Fascinating to consider how the labor informs the reading, the deliberate craft behind what initially seems mechanically simple. The success comes from harmonizing rigid composition with that very human disruption. Editor: So, we are left contemplating not only the composition itself but the artistic, almost manual effort behind its realization. Curator: A fusion of rigor and imperfection that challenges the very notion of the machine-made. Editor: Which encourages the question of what labor counts as worthwhile—both then and now.