The “Gegenströmung” from 1965 is deliberate in its execution, the nails are adapted to the background in their colouring and thus united with the pictorial field. The coherence of the movements of the nails, which although not everywhere are hammered into the wood as counterparts, is consistently adhered to. Uecker conceives an overall composition in which each nail has to harmonise. Nothing in this painterly nail landscape is reminiscent of how brutal the process of creation was. Rather it is a clear reference to the work of the artists’ group ZERO, which Uecker was part of from 1961 to 1966. When moving in front of the work, the interplay between the incidence of light and the object rises to a very filigree momentum in which the nails begin to dance—as powerful as they are contemplative.