With „Man, among influences and change“ Swiss artist Liz Gehrer exposes her new works at the Hermann Geiger Foundation in Cecina. Once again, Man is protagonist. The artist researches the relationship of Man with his environment, scanning the web of interpersonal relationships with x-rays: how are we moulded by our environment? Can freedom and social closeness coexist? Are not closeness and protection in fact limits? In relationships we are emotional and vulnerable, yet they give us strength and energy. Everyday we are confronted with countless news and images, mostly catastrophes and wars. How are we to cope, along this obstacle course made of participation, involvement and self defence? How are we to cope with the issues of ageing and caducity, when films and television refer us to images of always young, dynamic and beautiful people? These are the existential issues that Liz Gehrer elaborates with her creativity.
For years she has been working and experimenting with the use of paper, carton and iron. Since they are all salvaged materials, they possess the ideal characteristics to represent the idea of course and caducity. Paper and carton are cut into strips and pasted with glue. During the drying process, the material that hardens develops an unexpected strength and a surprising intrinsic dynamism – this way, the carton, once hardened, has already bent the iron structure. Soft and hard – changeable and stable: the artistic creation demonstrates the relativity and reversibility of the meaning. The invisible forces in action become visible resulting in the understanding that one cannot control everything.
Connected-involved/in the web
Liz Gehrer’s figures are formal, strong, abstract. Giant silhouettes, thin and fragile, reflect man exposed to the world. They carry the signs of a lived life: not smooth surfaces, but ridges, tears and colours.
Alone, coupled or in a group they erect themselves in the space – like clones – even in bronze versions, which vary slightly from the carton figures. A strong presence radiates from these figures, which channel a live sentiment of proximity and distance, but also of nuances and intermediate spaces.
The environment installation “Vernetzt – Verstrickt” (“Connected – involved/ in the web”) shows even more incisively the ambiguity of social relations.
The carton figures are interwoven in iron grids for reinforced concrete. Thirty-one grids, all 240 cm tall, but of two different widths are distributed in space in different positions, the path among them has the pattern of a labyrinth and makes the figures appear grouped always in a different way. The grids can be seen as elements of structure and support, as well as confines and limits.
Seeing together
The theme of Liz Gehrer’s collages is the influence of the media and the daily flow of images to which it refers. In these works she combines pieces of boards, newspapers and paint.
In “Mitsehen (II)” [“Seeing together”], a carton work in 18 pieces, the cut-out images are quite enlarged and the single subjects are barely recognizable, as if behind a veil.
The irritating and repetitive structure of a canvas, to a careful eye turns out to be barbed wire, from which faces pop out that seem to observe something that they are being indicated, or interested in themselves.
Beflügelt” (“Wings”) symbolises excitement, or the exhilarating feeling and the initiative to realise one’s dreams. But it is also connected to the risk of failure; it takes strength and perseverance to realise changes in daily life.
The exposition of forces is based on the specific processing technique of the wings. Environmental factors, such as temperature and humidity, can therefore influence and change their shape. During the hardening and drying process, certain forces are created that surprise the artist time after time. This dynamic, which is unique to the vital and creative forces, fascinates Liz Gehrer and runs through the work of art like a central thread: man is also exposed to influences and changes which he cannot escape, and in the end cannot control.
Caducity
The photographic collection in 19 pieces “Ins Gras beissen” – “Caducity” – portrays a ground installation with the theme of youth, caducity and death.
A pre-existing board – originally a giant poster which publicised a Swiss fashion house, with the perfect face of a model – was cut in several places and anchored in the garden of the artist’s atelier. With time, the grass began too grow though the holes, and the face of the model began to slowly change, until it disappeared. It was completely invaded by grass, covered by dry leaves in autumn and snow in the winter.
Liz Gehrer documented the process, which lasted several months, with a series of photographs, and obtained a work made of 19 snapshots. The single phases of transformation have been immortalised in a sort of diary of caducity. The represented theme, so existential and engaging, stimulates and provokes reflection – but the artistic installation remains highly aesthetic, not moralizing, not infrequently suggestive and delicately humorous.
One can feel the deeply positive attitude behind it, and in turn it communicates its strength and availability to actively face influences and change.
The ground installation “Feinstaubfilter” – “Filter for fine dust” (in sixteen parts) hints to another very serious theme: man, by breathing, cleans the air, thus becoming, ideally, a device to filter fine dust.
Men, symbolically reduced to mere mechanical devices, completely covered by white suits, lay on the ground filled with air, like human filters.
The filters are already completely black due to the residue of fine dust. From an enormous board, the face, once perfect, of a model laughs at them.
On her face, ruined by damaging environmental influences, lays a thin veil (from fine dusts).
Marina Schütz, art historian MA UZH, St. Gallen, Switzerland, in: Liz Gehrer, L’uomo, fra influssi e cambiamenti, catalogue edited by Alessandro Schiavetti for the Hermann Geiger foundation on the occasion of Liz Gehrer’s exposition, Cecina (LI), 2011