About Albert Mertz
By lone Mertz
Works from a Long Life in the Service of Art
It is difficult to grasp essential aspects of Albert Mertz’s artistic practice without recognising it in the context of his long engagement with Eastern philosophy and Zen. He often remarked that we are trapped in dualistic thinking, even as we attempt to break out of it. At times he would fall into contemplation of the grass, the flowers, the stalks, the colours and of life itself, unfolding into a state of heightened perception on the lawn. He withdrew into this state. If addressed, he would awaken, as if disturbed in the midst of a long inner journey.
Art, as Gerhard Richter has so precisely formulated it, is a higher form of thought. It was from this position of radical openness and unguarded perception that Mertz approached his work. For him, making art constituted an attempt both to pose and to explore the fundamental question of whether anything at all is worth devoting one’s life to. He wrote repeatedly that he did not believe he could commit himself to a purely intellectual conception of art. Mertz sought to reveal the simultaneity of reality and unreality. Absurdity became the surface through which he articulated the only divine tool available to us: humour, the deep laughter. He loved life precisely as it unfolded.
“We could have used a church!!” The remark fell on a dark winter’s day in February 1999, when I was shown the extensive Albert Mertz exhibition “Total?” at Nikolaj. It was an impressive presentation; the former church was filled to the point of bursting with folders, piles and stacks of material, so numerous that they could have justified an exhibition by themselves.
Stalke, by contrast, is no church. The small gallery forces its way beneath the asphalt at Vesterbrogade, 14A in the backyard, and declares that it has gone out of space. Underground—perhaps a place that belongs to Mertz? His life’s work is now for sale. Behind the closed door of the storage room, something remains unresolved.
Mertz’s contribution to art may have been more deliberate than previously recognised. His sustained theoretical writings remain preserved in workshop books, idea books, the Red-Blue notebooks, and in extensive stacks of manuscripts, measurement sheets, and diaries—more than fifteen hundred items. The sheer volume may appear overwhelming. “One must accomplish something, even when lying seven feet underground,” he used to say. He believed deeply in an engagement with art both intellectually and spiritually.
When his work was presented simultaneously at Nikolaj and at the museum in 1999, the intention was to consolidate his oeuvre. In this context it is important to mention the exhibition project at West Zealand Art Museum. Four leading international artists each created a room dedicated to Mertz.
Joseph Kosuth, whose 1969 article “Art after Philosophy” overturned the art world, travelled to the provincial town of Sorø, where his black text works on red and blue paper were installed in the fully red-blue room. Lawrence Weiner chose the tiny stairwell in the museum and addressed both Mertz and the Danish context. “Too many things to fit into such a small box”—indeed. Daniel Buren responded with yellow and green stripes, intensifying the red and blue through complementarity. Les Levine, through installation and video, engaged with the poetic and conceptual core of Mertz’s work. It was an exceptional event—one Mertz would undoubtedly have understood and perhaps even cherished. It suited Denmark well, and that makes its rarity all the more regrettable.
The international artists all engaged with the red-blue proposition—an idea that has faced significant resistance in Denmark. It was here that Mertz’s thinking and insights resonated most clearly.
I have always believed the matter to be straightforward: the attempt to articulate Art, which cannot be fully contained in language or thought. A floating signifier. A signal and a double image. The suspension in the flow of time. A presence. The now. A nothingness.
Or: all images in the world simultaneously. Without expressivity, because expressivity belongs to the personal realm and therefore lacks the “height” required. Painting, object and concept simultaneously. Forceful and monumental across scales, establishing dialogues between different spatial conditions. Effective both indoors and outdoors—yet perhaps most fully within the green space.
One thinks of red and blue in connection with Mertz, although the true concern lay elsewhere.
My project with Mertz’s work is nearing completion. I was married to him and collaborated with him for sixteen years. At the National Gallery of Denmark one can currently see a significant part of the work: the anamorphoses, the cuttings, fully mounted. He always used a stapler, tearing holes in the cardboard whenever he removed them. Now the works are mounted floating between vinyl and magnets, in dialogue with Judd, Richter, Smithson and Weiner. The process is efficient and professional. When I look at them now, I still notice the tiny holes from the stapler and the brief notes on the reverse—material traces of the ongoing dialogue.
In a workshop book of the period he writes: “The illusionistic R/B must remain far from figuration and abstraction, but be present as a purely spatial phenomenon.” He cites Malebranche, the 17th-century French philosopher: “ANAMORPHOSE — Ce que nous voyons n’est pas dans les choses, c’est dans notre âme.” What we see is not in the things; it is in our soul.
Lone Mertz
30 December 2000