Jochen Gerz

Jochen Gerz (born 4 April 1940 in Berlin, Germany) is a German conceptual artist who has spent most of his life in France (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. Jochen Gerz has been living in Ireland (Co. Kerry) 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). Gerz 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 Gerz’s work today.

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