Günther Förg
Günther Förg’s early works were black monochromatic paintings (1973-1976). He continued to explore modernist themes from a postmodern perspective. Förg avoided pitfalls of cynical commentary or irony, especially in his later works, such as Untitled (2004), acrylic paintings that appear to be zoomed-in interpretations of compositions from earlier modernist masterpieces; they bear resemblance to watercolors by Paul Klee, the color fields of Mark Rothko, or the scratchy marks of Cy Twombly. Förg appropriates older strategies of picture making yet presents them anew.
Peter Halley
In the 1980s, Peter Halley began his series of “Prison Paintings”: abstract compositions centered around a divided quadrangle. Inspired by New York City’s gridded urban plan and by his own isolation within it, he imagined the abstract shape as a barred prison cell connected to the outside world through electronic communication. As the subject only gains relevance over time, he updates his content through changes in color, material, and composition. For instance, industrial and quotidian materials such as Roll-A-Tex® create a textured surface that appeals to visual and tactile parts of the brain.
Simon Hantaï
Simon Hantaï produced Etude (1971) through pliage, a technique he invented in the early 1960s. Pliage involves folding the canvas and applying paint, then unfurling abstract shapes and compositions produced through the paint’s interplay with the canvas’s white ground. The technique privileges the canvas as a textile versus invisible support, and activates it in the work. Following Jackson Pollock, he sought a way of working that repeated neither traditional imagery nor methods. An episode of temporary blindness as a child led to the creation of this tactile approach thatprivileged feeling over seeing.
Damien Hirst
Hirst’s “Dot Paintings” began in 1988 and include thirteen sub-series. Phe-Val (2005), from the ‘Pharmaceutical’ sub-series is titled after a chain of amino acids found in a random corporate catalog. Nine dots are arranged in a grid, with each outer dot touching the edge of the picture plane. Hirst has conceived every composition, using each color only once. His assistants draw each dot with a compass and remove all traces of the human hand in the process, leaving only a precise array of colors that play with the viewer’s perception of the work’s two dimensional space.