Gustav Metzger
dal 18/5/2006 al 26/8/2006
Segnalato da
18/5/2006
Gustav Metzger
Lunds Konsthall, Lund
Karba, an installation in the inner courtyard with four cars whose exhaust fumes fill up a large plastic cube. The work was intended for Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 but was not realised there. Metzger presented also a proposal for the UN environmental conference in Stockholm where 120 cars would be encapsulated on a public venue to be overheated and self-combust.
Works
The exhibition Gustav Metzger, Works introduces a crucial European artist to
the Nordic audience. The artist and the curator Pontus Kyander have selected
works that reflect Gustav Metzger's activities, above all those straddling
the boundaries between art, politics, science and environmental activism.
Since1959 Gustav Metzger has elaborated his concept of 'auto-destructive
art'. In legendary actions, lectures and manifestos he has put forward an
art that decomposes itself. He was one of the founders of the movement
against nuclear weapons and his auto-destructive art can be seen as a
response to the destruction he has witnessed during his lifetime.
Lund Konsthall will, for the first time, realise the work Karba, an
installation in the inner courtyard with four cars whose exhaust fumes fill
up a large plastic cube. The work was intended for Documenta 5 in Kassel in
1972 but was not realised there. Simultaneously Metzger presented a proposal
for the UN environmental conference in Stockholm where 120 cars would be
encapsulated on a public venue to be overheated and self-combust. Entire new
models of Stockholm, June have been produced for the exhibition in Lund.
Since that conference was held in Sweden, the exhibition focuses specially
on Metzger's environmental works. When the exhibition continues to Zacheta
National Gallery in Warsaw its focus will change.
Throughout the 1990s interest in Gustav Metzger's work has steadily
increased. A series of exhibitions (the largest one at Generali Foundation
in Vienna 2005) have highlighted his importance for art in the post-war
period, but also demonstrated how closely related Metzger's ideas about art
and his methods are to contemporary working modes. He has had the
opportunity to produce new works and reproduce older ones. Many of his later
works deal with memory and history. He has recycled (and obstructed our view
of) photographs from the most painful moments of recent history, and in
large-scale installations he has worked with the Holocaust as a personal and
societal wound. Lund Konsthall shows Metzger's Historic Photographs along
with the new installations Eichmann and the Angel (2005) and In Memoriam
(2006).
Gustav Metzger was born 1926 to a Polish-Jewish family in Nuremberg. As a
child he experienced the onslaught of Nazism on the parading grounds of his
home city and Metzger was among the first to seriously discuss the aesthetic
of the Nazi era. His parents and a brother were killed in cause of the
persecutions, while Metzger himself was rescued to England.
Gustav Metzger has profoundly influenced the art life in Britain. In the
1960s he inspired Peter Townsend of The Who to destroy all instruments
during concerts, and his projections with liquid crystal were used by the
psychedelic movement in music.
In connection with the exhibition the Swedish-language journal Res Publica
will publish an issue on the theme of 'destruction'.
Opening Friday 19 May at 5-8 pm
Lunds Konsthall
Martenstorget 3 - Lund