Günther Uecker, Black Rain

Günther Uecker is the co-founder of ZERO, a German avant-garde created in 1958. Together with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, Uecker felt the urge to react against the subjectivity dominating the art world at that time. They believed contemporary art had become incapable of providing a right answer to the disasters and trauma of the World War and Germany’s complicit role in it. ZERO wished to make tabula rasa and start anew by concentrating on pure abstraction and working mostly with natural materials like light, wind, movement, and fire, etc., in order to eliminate subjectivity from art and to merge art and nature.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition showed works from Uecker’s Black Rain series. The earliest work in this series was first executed in 1999 and, along with later works, explores themes which Uecker connects to the very core of human existence: nature and religion.

In the Black Rain series, the element of nature is first expressed through Uecker’s technique of sprinkling black ink on white canvas, thereby evoking an impression of raindrops on soil. References to the fertility of the earth and our dependence upon nature’s boundless gifts to mankind are evident. Man’s response and acceptance of nature’s offerings is Uecker’s hard, blood-sweat-and-tears-filled labour, which he exercises day after day to maintain his existence. This, too, is embedded in Uecker’s layers of meaning.

Religion, omni-present and deeply anchored in human history, has been a major theme throughout the artist’s oeuvre. The figure of Joshua is the central pivot in, Joshua – In Commemoration of this moment (1999). Uecker not only narrates Joshua’s story but also draws attention to Joshua’s presence in the text of both the Bible as well as the Koran.

Schemot and Sura (both 2008) are inspired by Jewish, Arab and Christian beliefs that are found in the Old Testament, as they cry out against maltreatment and search for peace.

Uecker’s ultimate message, which comes to us through centuries of co-existence of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in cities around the world, is the basic “same-ness” of all of us. Profoundly human as we are, we act upon our deepest instinct to protect those we care for.