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Lot Essay
Towering two metres in height, Wind (2019) is a monumental example of Günther Uecker’s nail-paintings. At the heart of a practice that Uecker has pursued for six decades—with the present work executed as he approached his ninetieth birthday—these works straddle painting and sculpture, transforming the humble nail into a vehicle for the poetics of space, light, time and motion. The support consists of canvas laid over a heavy wood panel that Uecker has daubed with white paint and carpenter’s glue, creating a tactile backdrop of light and shade. Into this surface he has hammered hundreds of nails, forming a billowing, biomorphic relief. Converging in dense verticals at the centre, they radiate outward into a more open, flattened spread towards the edges. The nail-field is cut through with swells, squalls and ripples that aptly embody the gale-force dynamics of the title; its optical depth is enhanced by flurries of white paint brushed across its surface. Uecker’s nails—for all their utilitarian origin—become sensate, antenna-like expressions of human experience, coming together with the complexity of a nervous system.
In 1961, Uecker formally joined the Düsseldorf-based ZERO group founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. After the trauma of World War II, and in reaction to what they saw as the indulgent subjectivity of Art Informel, the ZERO artists sought to create art from a blank slate: they saw their work as a starting point, a regathering of primary forces into a condition of immaculate, open-ended potential. Piene used stencils to project ballets of light in darkened rooms, and set powdered pigments alight on paper; Mack’s defining medium was metal, through which he played with reflected light and movement—both optical and kinetic—to dazzling effect. Uecker’s central focus would be the nail, hammered into billowing, meditative white surfaces that recalled windblown fields and seas. ‘It was from the start an open domain of possibilities, and we speculated with the visionary form of purity, beauty, and stillness’, the artist explained. ‘These things moved us greatly’ (G. Uecker, quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p. 14).
Uecker has continued to explore this ‘open domain of possibilities’ ever since. Beyond his origins in the ZERO movement, the contemplative, daily act of hammering has ultimately taken on a transcendent, timeless significance, with the artist conceiving of himself as something akin to a medium. ‘His idea of art as a cosmic practice may feel like something from the past,’ writes Glenn Adamson, ‘when artist-heroes grappled with essential truths on our behalf. Yet there is profound humility in the way he steps into his studio each day with the tools of a carpenter, and little else’ (G. Adamson, ‘Günther Uecker Nails It Again’, Frieze, 15 November 2019). Indeed, while it conjures captivating visual effects, the materiality of Wind anchors it firmly to the earth. The commonplace, everyday nail—a simple marker of human time and labour—accumulates into a chorus of ritual, meditative magic. Bringing together conceptual abstraction, performative action and utopian ideals, the work bristles with spiritual power. Wind, after all, cannot be seen: it is only by its actions on the physical world that it becomes visible.
In 1961, Uecker formally joined the Düsseldorf-based ZERO group founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. After the trauma of World War II, and in reaction to what they saw as the indulgent subjectivity of Art Informel, the ZERO artists sought to create art from a blank slate: they saw their work as a starting point, a regathering of primary forces into a condition of immaculate, open-ended potential. Piene used stencils to project ballets of light in darkened rooms, and set powdered pigments alight on paper; Mack’s defining medium was metal, through which he played with reflected light and movement—both optical and kinetic—to dazzling effect. Uecker’s central focus would be the nail, hammered into billowing, meditative white surfaces that recalled windblown fields and seas. ‘It was from the start an open domain of possibilities, and we speculated with the visionary form of purity, beauty, and stillness’, the artist explained. ‘These things moved us greatly’ (G. Uecker, quoted in D. Honisch, Uecker, New York 1983, p. 14).
Uecker has continued to explore this ‘open domain of possibilities’ ever since. Beyond his origins in the ZERO movement, the contemplative, daily act of hammering has ultimately taken on a transcendent, timeless significance, with the artist conceiving of himself as something akin to a medium. ‘His idea of art as a cosmic practice may feel like something from the past,’ writes Glenn Adamson, ‘when artist-heroes grappled with essential truths on our behalf. Yet there is profound humility in the way he steps into his studio each day with the tools of a carpenter, and little else’ (G. Adamson, ‘Günther Uecker Nails It Again’, Frieze, 15 November 2019). Indeed, while it conjures captivating visual effects, the materiality of Wind anchors it firmly to the earth. The commonplace, everyday nail—a simple marker of human time and labour—accumulates into a chorus of ritual, meditative magic. Bringing together conceptual abstraction, performative action and utopian ideals, the work bristles with spiritual power. Wind, after all, cannot be seen: it is only by its actions on the physical world that it becomes visible.