Vertigo 1988

Gunther Forg made this painting Vertigo with a brush and some colour. I can imagine him, trying out different dark tones of blue in the first panel, maybe building up layers, scraping them back, and then doing it all over again. There's this delicious push and pull in each of the four panels. You see, the colour is applied in vertical strokes. So the physicality of the brush, of his arm moving, leaves its trace. The colours of the rectangles on the right are so vibrant! They’re like blasts of colour cutting through the darkness. I bet he mixed the perfect shade. Forg was a multi-faceted artist, working across painting, photography and sculpture. Like many artists, he was in conversation with earlier movements like Minimalism and Color Field Painting. I feel like painters are always responding to each other across time and space, trying new things out, failing, learning, and keeping the dialogue going.