Günther Uecker found his own visual language and impressively manages to create ever new, fascinating compositions using paint and nails. "Weißes Feld” (White Field) is an exceptionally well done work that testifies to Günther Uecker's most innovative artistic contributions and is characterized by a captivating optical effect achieved with the artist's signature nailing technique. Through his use of nails on the canvas, a both radical and astonishingly simple treatment of the image carrier, the present work embodies a wide range of artistic idioms of the post-war period and is a captivating and original expression of the artist's formal and intellectual ideas. While the early works from the 1960s are characterized by a predominantly white appearance, the artist's later works feature a greater variety of compositional devices, and often have a particularly strong presence. The nail as an industrial product gains a spiritual meaning. He intends to break the boundaries of human thinking with the blows of his hammer. The depth of the nails in the wood and the captivating visual pattern of "Weißes Feld" make this work an excellent example of Uecker's confident, mature style while it also emanates the radical spirit of "ZERO". Uecker builds his compositions following a ritual. The canvas is stretched taut on a panel, and the paint is often applied in gestural sweeps with the bare fingers. Following this movement, Uecker drives the nails into the wood with hard physical labor. The rhythm of the painting underlines the movement of the nails. Uecker's impulse-driven creative process, often described as a frenzy, generates an instinctive order of the iron pegs. Every nail responds to the position of the previous one. A mystical creative force seems to have brought the nails into their swirling order and inclination angle. In doing so, they break the boundaries of the pictorial surface; the nail heads, driven in at an angle, protrude beyond the edges of the picture and thus take up the surrounding space. The structure, which pushes upwards in powerful, small swirls, turns the nail into an abstract structuring element that brings the picture’s surface to life with light and shadow, movement and rhythm. The viewer becomes part of this picture. “Weißes Feld” changes with its movement in space, and the nails seem to develop a life of their own. This conflict between order and a primal and mysterious vitality is what the artist seeks to express in his nail pictures: "As I use nails as structural elements, I don't want them to be understood as nails. My aim is to use these means in their orderly relationship to each other, to achieve a vibration that disrupts their geometric order and is able to vex them." (quoted from: Mack Piene Uecker, Kestner-Gesellschaft Hanover, catalog 7, exhibition year 1964/65, p. 166). Günther Uecker created a work characterized by highly puristic aesthetics that captivates the viewer and encourages a contemplative absorption - a meditation image with a remarkable energetic density. [SM]