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Gerhard Merz, exhibition view, École des beaux-arts, Toulouse, 2005
© Printemps de septembre, photo André Morin
Born in 1947 in Mammendörf (Germany), he lives in Berlin.
Through the rigor of his theoretical thought and his singular approach to the artistic field, Gerhard Merz has been building, for more than 30 years, a mental work synthesis of architecture and painting which he himself calls archipittura.
From 1970 he distinguished himself by painting sentences or logos on a monochrome background highlighting the place of the painting in space. Very interested in the relationship between painting and space, he multiplies experiences mixing monochrome paintings with photographic enlargements with massive frames. His relationship to architecture and its codes led him to radicalize his position. The color, the text, the frames create highly structured emblematic spaces. Between abstraction, symmetry, seriality, it uses all the principles of modernist architecture and references to history. Attentive to measures, volumes, materials, typography, his exhibitions, like his catalogs, are of a cold or even learned precision.
Invited by Le Printemps de Septembre in 2005, he created a light installation in the rotunda of the institut supérieur des arts de Toulouse.
A production Le Printemps de septembre 2005.