Jochen Gerz

Jochen Gerz (born 4 April 1940) is a German conceptual artist who lived in France from 1966 to 2007. His work involves the relationship between art and life, history and memory, and deals with concepts such as culture, society, public space, participation and public authorship. After beginning his career in the literary field, Gerz has in the meantime explored various artistic disciplines and diverse media. Whether he works with text, photography, video, artist books, installation, performance, or on public authorship pieces and processes, at the heart of Gerz's practice is the search for an art form that can contribute to the res publica and to democracy. Gerz lives in Sneem, County Kerry, Ireland, since 2007. An autodidact, Jochen Gerz began his career in literature and later transitioned to art. He began writing and translating in the early 1960s (Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington), while occasionally working as a foreign correspondent for a German news agency in London (1961–62). He studied German language and literature, English language and literature and Sinology in Cologne, and then later archaeology and prehistory in Basel (1962–66). After moving to Paris, he became part of the Visual Poetry movement. As an activist and witness to the May 1968 demonstrations in Paris, Gerz took full advantage of the newfound freedom from literary and artistic conventions. He thus began in the late 1960s to engage critically with the media, both commercial and artistic, and increasingly came to see the viewer, the public and society at large as all part of the creative process. His photo/texts, performances, installations and works in the public space call into question the social function of art and the Western cultural legacy after Auschwitz. Doubts about art continually resurface and still pervade his work today. Jochen Gerz gained international recognition with his contribution to the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976, where his works were featured in the German Pavilion alongside those of Joseph Beuys and Reiner Ruthenbeck, as well as with his participation in documenta 6 and 8 in Kassel (1977/1987).