GUSTAV METZGER: AND THEN CAME THE ENVIRONMENT
Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles presents ‘Gustav Metzger. And Then Came the Environment’.
September 13, 2024 – January 12, 2025
‘And Then Came the Environment’ presents a range of Metzger’s scientific works merging art and science from 1961 onward, highlighting his advocacy for environmental awareness and the possibilities for the transformation of society, as well as his latest experimental works, created in 2014. The exhibition title comes from Metzger’s groundbreaking 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ wherein he proclaims an urgent need to redefine our understanding of nature in relation to the environment. Metzger explains that the politicized term ‘environment’ creates a disconnect from the natural world, manipulating public perception to obscure pollution and exploitation caused by wars and industrialization, and that it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’
An early proponent of the ecology movement and an ardent activist, Gustav Metzger (1926 – 2017) was born in Nuremberg to Polish-Jewish parents, and fled Nazi Germany to England when he was 12 with his brother via the Kindertransport. While working as a gardener, he began his art studies in 1945 in war-embroiled Cambridge, a nexus for scientific experimentation and debate as the Atomic Age was dawning. By the late 1950s, Metzger was deeply involved in anti-nuclear protests and developed his manifestos on ‘auto-destructive’ and ‘auto-creative’ art. These powerful statements were aimed at ‘the integration of art with the advances of science and technology,’ a synthesis that gained wide recognition in Europe in the 1960s through his exhibitions, lecture-demonstrations and writing.
The artworks on view in ‘And Then Came the Environment’ reveal Metzger’s lifelong interest in drawing and gesture, presenting works on paper from the mid-1950s alongside models, installations and later, Light Drawings that underpin the artist’s desire for human interaction amidst the reliance on technology that continues to this day. Following his death, The Gustav Metzger Foundation was established to further Metzger’s work and carry on his legacy.
‘And Then Came the Environment’ also presents early kinetic projects Metzger developed in the Filtration Laboratory of the University College of Swansea in 1968 (‘Dancing Tubes’ and ‘Mica Cube’); various iterations of his projects against car pollution including the model ‘Earth Minus Environment’ (1992); and the Light Drawing series (2014), made using fiber-optic light directed by air or hand.