Günther Förg

Günther Förg (1952–2013) was a German painter, sculptor, and photographer with an irreverent approach to abstraction. He was driven by a boundless urge for freedom, and a predilection for experiment, drawing inspiration from great artists of the past, as well as his contemporaries. Merging disciplines and boundaries, he worked in a variety of materials, ranging from bronze and lead, to plaster and reflective glass. In exhibiting his work, Förg assimilated the architecture of the gallery space – even doors and windows – into the work itself.

Three years in the making, it reinterprets Förg’s oeuvre to reveal an artistic project that raises important questions about the traditional role of an object as a conveyor of fixed meaning. The book’s subtitle—“A Fragile Beauty”—is an indication of how Förg successfully manipulated what is behind and beyond an object’s appearance. The publication contains texts by Kirsty Bell, Lisa Le Feuvre, Liam Gillick and Matthew Witkovsky, Megan Luke, Lauren Richman, Beatrix Ruf, and Jeffrey Saletnik, and is edited by Gavin Delahunty, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art of Dallas Museum of Art, who also wrote an introductory essay.

This publication was made in collaboration with the Dallas Museum of Art and is published by Yale University Press.

Design by Joseph Logan and Katy Nelson, copy-edited by Martin Fox, 248 pages, 26,7 x 23,5 cm, 9 ¼  x 10 ½ inches, hardcover, English, € 24.90 in the museum shop during the exhibition, ISBN: 9780300229226