For his fourth exhibition with the gallery, Günter Umberg will install a constellation of individual paintings inside the confines of the largest wall in the exhibition space. Entitled PLAN No.7, this part of the show represents a continuum of his previous Territorium installations, one of which could be seen in his exhibition with Galleri Riis in 2011. In PLAN No. 7, the densely layered monochrome pigment paintings are positioned on and around constructed wooden panels, creating a powerful gravitational field in the space.

Carefully placed in the adjoining room are seven recent paintings in varying shades of blue and gray. Umberg considers the installation of the exhibition to be a part of the artistic process, and consequently always installs his paintings himself. He does not conceive of the exhibition space as a neutral container, but works actively with the gallery’s architecture and thus considers all aspects and possibilities for the presentation.

For more than forty years, Günter Umberg (b.1942 in Bonn) has been making monochrome paintings with a focus on defining color – its properties and significance – and on the translation of color into picture. The intensity of Umberg’s paintings is the result of a repeated application of pigments and binders, transforming the technical process into a spiritual one, which results in vibrant and spatially present works. In most of his later productions, the MDF supports are protruding from the wall with slanted edges, allowing the picture planes that have been woven with pigments, to be projected into the space of the galley and the realm of the viewer.

In the course of a long career, Umberg´s far-reaching approach to painting has surfaced in projects as artist-curator, such as in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2000), and the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main in Frankfurt (2005). The exhibition Bilderhaus Schattenraum in Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich (2006) was a spectacular synthesis of his painterly, theoretical, installation and curatorial interests. Günter Umberg lives and works in Cologne, and Corberon in Burgundy.