Our large energy field "Nacht" from 1986 is part of Uecker's most famous and highly sought-after group of works, the "Felder" (Fields), which emerged from Uecker's earlier, strictly linear "Raster" (Grids) and "Strukturen" (Structures). The "Felder" became the internationally acclaimed "ZERO" artist's key complex in which he made ever-new variations with great passion. In the spirit of the "ZERO" movement, Uecker reinvented art with his nail paintings, liberating it from the previously dominant significance of the painterly style as an artistic signature. Since the 1960s, Uecker, who declared the nail to be his distinctive means of artistic expression and lent it a spiritual and poetic dimension for the first time, has repeatedly explored the subject of his invention, the field of nails, spreading a dense structure of nails across the canvas in a swirling movement, initially in smaller and then increasingly larger formats. Since the 1980s, Uecker has used larger nails with long necks, which he placed on the canvas with even more force and which increasingly structured the pictorial space in more expansive movements, expanding the painterly accentuated surface into the third dimension. He also left the billowing necks of the nails partially unpainted, thus incorporating a stronger contrast of color and material into compositions intensified and animated by the effect of light and shadow. In Uecker's works of the 1980s, the force and dynamism behind their creation were more apparent than in the reduced compositions of the 1960s. While the individual nail in the strict choreography of earlier works had to fit in, it became increasingly emancipated, entering into clear counter-movements and tense confrontations. Uecker's unique artistic creations evoke memories of landscape impressions. His nail fields are reminiscent of grain fields or dune landscapes in a storm, and thus become documents of his childhood impressions of nature on the Baltic peninsula Wustrow. The idea of human humility before a sublime nature is a central aspect of Uecker's work. Accordingly, Uecker's fascinating creation "Nacht" is inevitably reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's famous painting "The Monk by the Sea" (1808/1810, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin), in which the inconspicuous figure of the monk depicted from behind becomes virtually one with the overwhelming impression of the nature around him, the vast sky and sea and the eternal cycle of growth and decay. This romantic view, which seeks the dissolution of man's boundaries in nature, shows clear parallels to Uecker's work, even if the artistic realization of these complex worlds of thought and feeling is completely different. In Uecker's work, the anonymous, industrial product of the nail becomes a carrier of intense spiritual expression, an artistic paradox that is still responsible for the unique aura of Uecker's powerful creations. The energy field "Nacht" is an outstanding example of the special power and density of associations emanating from Uecker's enormous oeuvre, oscillating between boundless vastness and finiteness, beauty and transience, life and death.
Today, Uecker's nail paintings can be found in important international collections like Tate Modern, London, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Berlin, as well as the Centre Pompidou, Paris. [JS]