Jochen Gerz: “come on over the dark side” & Arbetein aus verwandten Bereichen

This catalogue documents one of the first large-scale solo exhibitions of the German artist Jochen Gerz (born in Berlin in 1940, but also having resided in Cologne, Basel, London and Paris, and currently in Ireland) and centers on a large-scale audio-visual installation that presents itself as a wooden panel some forty meters in length, to which an audio recorder is attached and dragged along the (...) floor by way of a system of pulleys. Entitled Come Over to the Dark Side, the work sites its theme in cultural borders and divisions, no less that in highly personal reflections on the part of its author. Jochen Gerz in fact presents an audio recording of one of his texts, in verse, that bears the title Kulchur Piece #5. The catalogue also documents some of the artist’s previous work, starting in 1961, and includes an interview between the artist and Martin Kunz, the curator of the exhibition. In many of his works, Jochen Gerz has extensively addressed the history of the Holocaust—the Shoah—and has reflected most in particular on both the general and specifically “commemorative” function of the monuments that refer back to this tragic period.