Günther Uecker

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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.