"Feld" from 2011 is a prime example of Günther Uecker's archetypal nail reliefs. As one of the main protagonists of the ZERO group, founded in 1958, Uecker, together with fellow artists Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, strove to reduce artistic creation to the most original and elementary facets of visual perception: Light, shadow and movement. Around 1957, he began to integrate industrially manufactured mass products into his work. Nails turned out to be the perfect means of expression for these basic ideas, and they would remain his preferred medium to this day. The nail is "the ideal object [..] to model light and shadow - to visualize it. It protrudes from the flat surface as a tactile sensor, like a sundial" (Günther Uecker, quoted from: Alexander Tolnay, ed., Günther Uecker Zwanzig Kapitel, Ostfildern-Ruit 2006, p. 72). At oblique angles and with different depths, Uecker hammers the nails with great physical strain in an almost ritualistic repetition, creating a captivating duality of organic form and linear structure. The order of the nails follows an instinctive momentum, so that the nails interact with one another. In this work with an appealing format, he achieves this in a particularly subtle yet expressive way. A dense landscape of countless nails is transformed into a dramatic chiaroscuro intensified by the white-painted nail heads. The result is a complex effect that changes with the viewer's perspective and the light incidence. Uecker invites us to walk around the work, to experience it, because new patterns, movements and shadows can be discovered from every angle. In the present work Uecker creates an effect that transcends both time and space and refuses to wane. Our nail landscape "Feld" can thus be seen as a wonderful example of Günther Uecker's perfect monumental lightness. [AW]