Art I Like - Gunther Uecker

German artist Gunther Uecker is new to me - I saw one of his nail paintings at Haunch of Venison recently, where the current show places him together with Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Enrico Castellani - "All four artists were born within six years of each other (1928-1933) and their practices offer an opportunity to compare the strong aesthetic influences, interests and objectives their generation shared, despite developing on either side of the Atlantic....Castellani trained as an architect in Brussels, Uecker went to art school and the Kunstakademie in the former German Democratic Republic, while Flavin and Judd studied art history and philosophy respectively in the US."

In 1955 Uecker crossed from the GDR to Dusseldorf (as did Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke a few years later). Uecker started making his nail paintings in the late 1950s, and also "occupied himself with the medium of light, studied optical phenomena, series of structures and the realms of oscillation which actively integrate the viewer and enable him to influence the visual process by kinetic or manual interference" (says the Haunch of Venison website)."In his typical manner, light and shade activate the area of the enormous nails , thus creating a field of powerful motion, which changes according to the perspective. The intensity of the process of creation endures in the work. The subtle choppiness of the surface makes for a conflictive relationship to the material’s rigidity." says this site.
Neither of these images is "Wind", which is a two-panel painting, the nails with large flat heads daubed with white paint, the background painted pale and darker cream. The nails undulate in height and in angle; the shadows of the nails add to the effect of movement.