Zander Galerie is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by painter Günter Umberg. On view are two large-scale works, entitled Feld 3 and Feld 7, aligning groups of previously individual paintings inside and outside of a field of vertical panels. The two large pieces are complimented by a series of eight works from the group Ohne titel (GjPFRpPPu), 2024. Perhaps these echo early works on paper the artist made in Antwerp in 1964 and 1965. Two of the early works are now exhibited for the first time. Like time capsules they trace back Umberg’s process of thinking through painting, a practice he has continued to engage in to this day.

Günter Umberg (b. 1942 in Bonn) has radically centred his idea of painting on its essentials, de­fining it as “painted colour”. His works induce an acute awareness of an image including its specific situation: “I see a picture not exclusively in its objectness, but always in its specific re­la­tion­ship to me. This presence allows a close relationship to the picture. I no longer stand outside a relational set of ele­ments, but instead, through sensation and experience, stand in relation to the picture.” (Excerpt from a statement in Radical Painting, Williams­town, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, 1984.)

In his studio in Antwerp, where Umberg stayed between 1964 and 1965, he created works with various materials such as graphite, ink and coloured pencils. The traces of the processes of application, flowing and drying of turpentine are preserved in them. Seen from today’s per­spective, these works on paper occupy an important place in Umberg’s oeuvre. The new group of works Ohne titel (GjPFRpPPu), 2024 takes up elements of the early works, but places them in different contexts. The relationship to the surrounding space as an integral part of the works becomes clear. Spatial transparency, bounded and unbounded fields and reflections are part of these works. A corporeal reference is also unmistakable in them.

The large-format work Feld 7, 2024 combines two panels and five autonomous images from different years. They form a whole and place themselves within it. As is characteristic of Günter Umberg’s work, the delicate surface of the paintings is sometimes velvety and rich, sometimes open-pored, with each colour pigment possessing its own physicality. The multiple layering of the pigments builds up the physical presence of the colour. Not only do the works unfold a depth of space, but also an expansion in time, which is extraordinary in painting. When looking at the field, the gaze gravitates back and forth, approaches and recedes, observes and always remains in flux.

In his work, Umberg poses fundamental questions about the image and its viewing: How and where is an image located? What symbiosis does it enter into with the surrounding space? Can the surrounding space be an equal component, even a partner? Can it be positioned in such a way that the pictorial transcends its boundaries, if they exist at all? What is the surrounding space anyway? Can it be defined physically or also mentally (immaterially)? Is it a mere vessel, or is it boundless in the sense that it fills and expands infinitely?

Günter Umberg lives and works in Cologne and Corberon, France. Numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to his work, including solo shows at Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Haus Kon­struktiv, Zurich; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; Städtische Galerie im Städel Museum, Frankfurt/Main; Espace de l’Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux; Busch-Reisinger-Museum of the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA and MoMA PS1 in New York. Umberg has taught at various universities and curated more than forty exhibitions.