movement. In 1968, he co-founded, with Jean-Fran-
c ̧ois Bory, the alternative editorial group Agentzia.
Gerz would henceforth explore several artistic
paths at the same time, such as literature, painting,
sculpture, drawing, and photography, always keen-
ly critiquing the media and desiring to involve the
spectator in the creative process. Since 1969, seve-
ral of his photo/text works have played off the ten-
sion between photographs (most often black and
white, but in color since 1987) and critical texts.
If Gerz forms columns of lines to supplement
illustrations, suggesting a correspondence between
text and image, the reader very soon arrives in a no
man’s land in which he tries to locate the meaning
of the two only seemingly related information sys-
tems. Although the relation between image and
verb is called into question, the meaning, or rather
the multiple meanings emerge in the failure of com-
munication and in the concomitant deception of
representation. The linearity of verbal text gives
Gerz’s photographs a particular temporal dimen-
sion that re-inscribes them in the field of reality,not
despite but throughfiction. ‘‘Time does not allow
myth to exist,’’ as Gerz said. That is why memory,
the act of recalling the past, plays such an important
role in Gerz’s work, as a fundamentally aesthetic
field. Nevertheless, the object of souvenir ultimately
seeps away; it can only be evoked and not seized
through photography. What links Gerz’s sculpture
with his photographic work is this interest on mon-
umentality, as something which is concerned with
memory, rather than with power.
Texts and images are used to examine their own
function and dysfunction, their mutual analogies as
well as their internal dissemblance. His photo-texts
resemble a riddle more than having the quality of
directing messages for purposes of communication.
With his combinations of images and texts, Gerz
departs from the tradition established by John Heart-
field. Heartfield created collages presenting social
contradictions and power structures; he staged dis-
sonances and focused on contradiction. One doesn’t
find these kinds of alienation or enlightenment stra-
tegies in Gerz’s works. His works of art don’t present
didactics in an aesthetic guise. The information con-
tent of Gerz’s messages ‘‘keels’’ over, turning them
into riddles when trying to understand them.
Following the French symbolist poet Mallarme ́,
who showed less interest in words than in the white
spaces between them, Gerz said: ‘‘I’m interested in
the non-visual intermediate zone developing from
the operation, which is neither text nor image.’’
This intermediate zone illustrates the shift from pho-
tographic reality to intellectual abstraction. InDe
L’Art n1 (About Art n1), 1982–1983, black-and-
white landscape photographs are associated with
a text about art. A poetic dimension rises up between
the metaphorical images on the concept of landscape
and the theoretical essay on what art might be.De
L’Art n 1 is the first of a series of eight works com-
posed always in the same way: texts and photographs
complete each other, but they could also be viewed
separately. Suchworks askquestions onthe interstice
and/or link between the visual and the verbal, their
interdependency and their conflicts.
In contrast to politically involved artists of the
60s and 70s who considered art as a weapon to be
wielded in the everyday debates in the arena of
social policy, Gerz pursues a more radical approach
by continually calling communications systems into
question, not as neutral instruments but as elements
of an existing order. Rather than linking his inter-
rogations with the ‘‘representation of politics,’’ he
oriented his work to the ‘‘politics of representa-
tion,’’ that is, its internal structure and ideological
forms. For Gerz, aesthetics are intimately related to
the social field. As he showed withExposition de
huit personnes habitant la rue Mouffetard, Paris
(Exhibition of eight persons residing Mouffetard
road in Paris), 1972, art is a space of a potential
collective expression.
In 1976, Gerz represented Germany in the Venice
Biennale and participated in Documenta 6 (1977) and
8 (1987) in Kassel. In the 1980s, theartist was commis-
sioned to create several monuments inwhich he would
subvert the idea of commemoration, turning specta-
tors into actors:Monument Against Fascism,Harburg,
1986; Bremen Questionnaire, Bremen, 1990; 2,146
Stones Monument Against Racism, Saarbru ̈cken,
1990–93;The Living Monument,Biron,1997.Inpa-
rallel with his artistic work, Gerz has taught as a
visiting professor in Germany, France, Canada, and
the United States. He is a Senior Research Fellow at
Coventry University in England and a Member of the
Art Academy in Berlin, and he holds the Honorary
Chair at the Braunschweig Art Academy.
VangelisAthanassapoulos
Seealso:Conceptual Photography; History of Pho-
tography: the 1980s; Photography in FranceBiography
Born in Berlin in 1940, moved to Paris in 1966. Uses
various media such as texts, photography, video, instal-
lation. Awarded with the German Critics Prize, and
Ordre National du Me ́rite, 1996; Grand Prix National
des Arts Visuels of France, 1998; Helmut-Kraft-Stif-
tung Prize, 1999. Represented Germany in the Venice
Biennale, 1976; participated in Documenta 6 and 8 in
Kassel. In the 1980s, he was commissioned to createGERZ, JOCHEN