Back and Forth The 100 plus new abstract canvases, carefully reproduced in this book with its unusual format, are the result of one of the most intensive phases of work by Günther Förg in recent years, which took place between Autumn 2008 and Spring 2009. The artist places a sequence of calculated colour fields into a basic grid, which changes from format to format, each individual painting having its own tonal rhythm characterised in turn by a high degree of physical concentration. It is then no coincidence that Rudi Fuchs' linguistically stirring yet acutely observed text discerns an affinity between this work and Piet Mondrians's last und most unusual painting, »Victory Boogie Woogie«. However, the way the palette of colours is organised, supplemented by the structure of each individual colour field, substantially differentiates Günther Förg's endeavour from that his predecessor. In fact it is the free flow of the brushstrokes, the delicate upward and more forceful downward movement alongside the choice of colours, which together propel each individual composition beyond the scope of all previously known abstraction. Or as Rudi Fuch's puts it: »Whether he painted vibrating colour fields, irregular grids comprising raw, fibrous lines, he always had clever interruptive strategies in the implementation. Figuration had to give way in order to release the primordial energy of the brushstroke in its purest form: vigorous abstraction«.

The focus of this catalog lies on a series of six large-format paintings that Günther Förg originally produced in 2003 for a group show at the baroque castle of Dyck. The paintings are held in various shades of gray, with bright accents in red and pink, and were fit by the artist into the 80-inch wall panels of his exhibition room in the castle. When in 2017 they were shown at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, this sitespecific work turned into a powerful series of pure, absolute paintings. Reinforced by a selection of smaller paintings from the same time, the complete historical dimension of these works becomes visible--abstract, almost minimalist but still evoking an idea of nature. Central to their success is Förg's very immediate manner of painting, as described by Matthias Buck in his essay: "The viewer, standing back from these paintings, can take up the perspective of the artist at work. While we have the picture in its present totality before us, we also have an overview of its path to completion. The painting comes across not as the overwhelming result of an artistic genesis that remains the secret of its creator, but as a transparent entity which, precisely because it has no secret, amazes us with the simplicity of means by which very complex pictorial effects have been created." Exhibition: Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany (28.04.-03.06-2017).

Gunther Forg's artistic oeuvre encompasses paintings, graphic and sculptural works as well as a large body of architectural photographs. In 2001 he shot a series about Bauhaus architecture in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The buildings were designed in the 1930s and 40s, largely by architects who had emigrated from Europe. Their intention was to implement the social, technical and aesthetic properties of Bauhaus. Arieh Sharon, Sam Barkai, Genia Averbouch, Ze'ev Haller, Pinchus Hutt, Richard Kauffmann, Erich Mendelsohn and others endeavoured to build affordable housing for the present wave of immigration. Forg's photographic research using a 35mm camera and zoom lens presents the uncompromisingly modern architecture in an unembellished way, sometimes dilapidated, often featuring careless renovations or additions. They stand as monuments to the social utopias of their time.

German painter Norbert Schwontkowskis vision of the world is profound,

Fifteen years ago, Siegfried Gohr pinpointed the connection between the collected works, which resides in language, in words, sentences and poetry, because "the collection itself which holds a certain distraction within it, embodies the masterpiece as non-identity." This perspective is somewhat outmoded nowadays - inasmuch as the collector has long since hugely extended his range of works with pieces by Pierre Klossowski, Enrico David, Nicole Eisenmann, Cerith Wyan evans or Franz von Bayros - for the simple reason that it is not the collection, that is to say the collector, which cosntitutes the masterpiece, but rather the fact that the movement around the masterpieces needs to be traces.

Since 1986, in his Originals series, Dag Erik Elgin has devoted himself as a re-creating painter to his own admittedly subjective, but not unusual, canon of modern painting. In the series he repeats the selected works, all of them Modernist or Clas­sical Modernist, but without pursuing maximum ­authenticity in the copying manner of an art forger. The resulting canvases are at the boundary be­tween complete appropriation and studying replica; in them, Elgin relives as a painter the processes where­by the actual originals arose, but at the same time uses them to generate an intellectual reflection on the sensitive topics of ­original and forgery. His Originals are aesthetically attrac­­t­ive, yet--as forgeries--they would not withstand a critical autopsy in the art market, for their materials and manner of production in no way disguise the fact that they have been created in the present. Yet it is the painting itself, the in­sistence on a personal ­product in oil on canvas, that makes the Original an original in an age of perfected digital opportunities for appro­pri­ation, which would outdo any artisanal transfer.