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Eva
1983
Colour photograph
Dimensions: 180 x 120 cm
Reference: ACF0381
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The year 1983 could be considered the beginning of Förg's creative maturity, when the different aspects of his work begin to find their logic in terms of arrangement and meaning. This becomes especially clear in his photography. His main motifs are architectural structures and elements, particularly windows, from a particular period—Rationalism in fascist-ruled Italy, with an emphasis on the buildings of Adalberto Libera or Giuseppe Terragni, or Soviet architecture—or from specific houses with both aesthetic and personal meaning for him, such as that of Curzio Malaparte or the one Wittgenstein designed for his sister Margaret. He also photographed houses belonging to art collectors or gallery owners. The human figure never appears in this series of photographs. This might be the reason why the artist intersperses portraits of women among the buildings as a counterpoint that is occasionally biographical in nature. The staircase or staircases have been a predominant motif in both the avant-garde (Duchamp and his famous nude) and the post-avant-garde (Blinky Palermo). For Förg, the staircase, in addition to being almost a photographic leitmotif, reflects a personal event: his fall down a stairwell, which he examined in the series ‘Fall’. This might explain the absolute predominance of the overhead shot, which at the same time is a reference to his declared interest in cinema (primarily Godard, Hitchcock and the German Expressionists). It also contains references to certain set designs by Piranesi, whose prints Förg avidly collects. He uses a much larger format for his work than most professional photographers, and his photographs are solidly framed, with the glass producing a mirror effect, and the passe-partout often limited to just three sides of the picture. In the artist’s own words: “What matters to me is how the images are looked at. When they are hung in a gallery—or anywhere else—the space is reflected in them. And so one needs to walk through that space. It is very poetic to walk like that and always have views of a window”.

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