Marais, Paris
Günther Uecker
Lichtbogen
Lévy GorvyTo make an appointment, please visit: bit.ly/2H9Hgh0 Lévy Gorvy is pleased to present Günther Uecker: Lichtbogen, the inaugural presentation at its new gallery in Paris. Uecker’s first solo exhibition in Paris since 1968, Lichtbogen constitutes a dramatic development in the master’s seven-decade practice with a monumental new body of works, the first of their kind. These radiant paintings vibrate with the energy of their creation, embodying fluidity and light. Collectively, the works on view find the artist mapping the world within himself as he absorbs and translates the ever-changing experience of life around us. "Painting with watercolors in the vastness of an ochre-colored desert landscape on the Persian Gulf. Water that pours out from the mountains, flowing through an ancient cultivated environment at the Gulf. Sweet river water, marrying with the Arabian Sea through the Strait of Hormuz, a nodal point in our history. Over the clearance, the visions of the Arabian desert island shimmer in the green waters, waters shining in the entire color spectrum, visions of a biblical land, a land of prophetic revelations. An arc of light painted, flowingly, on paper, like a scar, a vein of life itself, amid the rapture of the colors— a line painted, like an arch, an arrow ascending out. Watercolors, ink, tempera and paste, mixed on paper and applied on canvas, generate through their mixing —pigments in water— a streaming border zone. An electric arc that guides us into the universe, traveling along the scar-line of our injuries, beginning from a source of life, source of life’s endangerment, our precariousness and our vulnerability. In revolt, in transgression of that threshold of a finitude, a vision from the depths of our provenance— the paint guided in a circle. The paintbrush, tethered, traces a line like a compass, piercing the act of painting like an uprising of the life-force, like an ejaculation of vital action, seeking to overcome an affliction. Humbly, back in my workshop, that hermitage for consciousness, for inner joy, painting, in jubilation, all that is wondrous, all that exists, in this world." —Günther Uecker, 2020 Lévy Gorvy’s expansive, light-filled space will provide the ideal platform for Uecker’s new body of work. In the heart of the Marais district, between rue du Temple and rue Rambuteau, Lévy Gorvy Paris is situated in an area known as the heart of Parisian culture and historical locus of the city’s diversity. Architect Luis Laplace of Laplace Studio, Paris, has been commissioned to remodel the site, the former home to Espace Claude Berri, respecting Jean Nouvel’s existing innovative design.