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Gustav Metzger, Works
20 May - 27 August 2006
Gustav Metzger’s first Manifesto for an Auto-Destructive Art from 1959 proved directional for one of the most uncompromising artistic careers in our time. Auto-destructive art is made to be self-destroyed. The act of destruction is crucial to the work.
In London in the 1960s one could see Metzger’s actions (such as his painting performance involving acid and nylon canvases) or hear his lectures. In 1966 he gathered large parts of the avant-garde of the time for the legendary Destruction In Art Symposium (DIAS). At the first Fluxus exhibition in London his work was censored, since the organisers didn’t understand his project of plastering a wall with all sheets of a newspaper. In a later reconstruction the work reveals itself as strongly historically charged. It coincided in time with the revelations about Soviet nuclear bases in Cuba and the most serious political crisis of the post-war period, when the world was at the brink of nuclear war.
The boundary between art and political activism has always been kept open in Gustav Metzger’s art. He was among the pioneers of the struggle against nuclear weapons, and he protested already in the 1950s against new motorways and increased pollution in London. His auto-destructive art is best understood against this background, as an answer to and an attack on the destruction that happens around us all the time. Destruction, however, is not all negative. It is also a precondition for change and creation. Metzger has spoken of both auto-destructive and auto-creative art.
Many of Gustav Metzger’s projects have remained unrealised and exist only as proposals and models. His practice is more to do with today’s art than with the period when it was created. In 1972 he was supposed to participate in Documenta 5 in Kassel with the work Karba, consisting of four cars whose exhaust fumes fill up a large plastic cube. For unknown reasons the work was never realised. This also happened with Stockholm, June, a proposal for the UN Environmental Conference in Stockholm the same year, for which 120 cars were to be encased in plastic, overheat and self-combust. It is only now that Karba, the work for Documenta, is realised for the exhibition in Lund. It is both sculpture and process, a protest as well as an ambiguous monument.
Gustav Metzger’s art reveals a strong interest in processes. His works are at the same time art and investigation. Technology and science have clearly influenced him, for instance his experiments with chemical and physical processes, his automatic art and his early interest in the possibilities of the computer. Sometimes this open-endedness has spawned unforeseeable results. His experiments with projected images of heated liquid crystals that create short-lived, ever-changing colour fields were integrated into the psychedelic aesthetic of the 1960s by bands such as Cream and The Who. In addition, it was Gustav Metzger's lectures that inspired Pete Townsend to end The Who's concerts with the destruction of all the instruments.
Metzger’s practice is founded in a dark vision of Man and History. Born 1926 to a Polish-Jewish family in the German city of Nuremberg, he was fascinated as a child by the spectacular Party Days that the Nazis organised there every year. He had an early interest in German art and culture, and has remained attached to the German language. Most of his family, including both parents and an older sister, perished in the Holocaust, while he and his brother Mendel escaped to England in 1939.
Throughout the 1990s Gustav Metzger has continuously elaborated the series Historical Photographs, in which images relating to difficult moments in history are made hard to access or altogether hidden to he viewer. Several of the works deal with Nazism and the Holocaust, but the artist also addresses topics such as the massacre on Temple Mount in Jerusalem and violence against the environment.
During the last decade a series of exhibitions have highlighted Gustav Metzger, making his importance for post-war developments in art ever more obvious. The exhibitions have also given him the possibility to realise several new projects, such as Eichmann and the Angel (2005) and In Memoriam (2006). Both these works reflect on memory, history, the Holocaust and in particular the fate of the philosopher and writer Walter Benjamin.
Pontus Kyander, Curator of the exhibition
Press Release
Gustav Metzger, Works
Lund Konsthall, 20 May – 27 August 2006
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’.
For further information and press images please contact Lund Konsthall, tel. +46 46 355290.
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