Gerz Jochen Biography
Jochen Gerz (born 4 April 1940 in Berlin, Germany) is a German conceptual artist who spent most of his life in France (1966 to 2007). His work involves the relationship between art and life, history and memory and addresses concepts such as culture, society, public space, participation and public authorship. After starting his career in the literary field, Gerz has meanwhile explored various artistic disciplines and different media. Self-taught, Jochen Gerz began his literary career and later turned to art. He studied German language and literature in Cologne, and later Archeology and Prehistory in Basel (1962-1966). After moving to Paris, he joined the Visual Poetry movement. Jochen Gerz achieved international recognition with his contribution to the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976, where his works were exhibited in the German pavilion alongside those of Joseph Beuys and Reiner Ruthenbeck, as well as with his participation in the documentaries 6 and 8 in Kassel (1977 / 1987). Numerous retrospectives of his works followed in Europe and North America (including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Corner House Manchester, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Newport Harbor Art Museum and the Neuberger Art Museum NY). From the mid-1980s onwards, he turned his attention back to the public world and in the 1990s he increasingly distanced himself from the world of the art market and museums. Gerz has created several (counter)monuments since 1986, which immediately set out to subvert the tradition of remembrance, becoming the creative vortex of his work. His public authorship projects and participatory processes in the public sphere since 2000 have succeeded in radically transforming the relationship between art and spectator. Since 1970, Jochen Gerz has lectured at art schools and universities in Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland and the United United.
