21 Oct 2014

Bernd Metz at galerie hanfweihnacht, Frankfurt

Bernd Metz
Everything In Its Right Place

With 'Everything In Its Right Place' the gallery hanfweihnacht presents the first solo presentation of Bernd Metz. The show includes artworks created during his residencies in Korea and Vienna. The compilation shows the contrast within and thus patterns of perception and viewing habits begin to falter.

Bernd Metz's aesthetics are of a significant clarity while stressing the question how imagery may be reduced to the core. He balances on a tightrope: Quiet interactions – a kink in the paper, a cut in the wall – define and construct new realities. Thus, the works distance themselves from their pictorial presentations, without denying the existence of figurative schemes. With the backdrop of Visual Culture Studies Metz's works turn to dynamics.

Bernd Metz works with surfaces, spaces and mediality based on conceptual openness. In terms of J. Rebentisch his works can be seen 'less works, but models of their possibilities'. Therefore seemingly arbitrary compositions are so exciting for Metz. However, an initial creative decision is carried out by the artist: the first gesture, the first line or the first cut into the material: These impulses refer to all the options, that the artist did not choose. The visible always includes the invisible. This thought reoccurs constantly in Metz's works. He is an artist of vast reading and critical thinking, proficient in current philosophy and theoretical discurses.

„Questioning the conceptual position of art and the agency of an artist but staying confidently calm evokes an area of conflict. He knows his own mind. The artistic practice of Bernd Metz provokes subliminal. Critically, consistent, smart, back-stabbingly poetic'

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Bernd Metz (born 1979) studied art and cultural studies in Frankfurt, Germany and philosophy and art at the UAB in Barcelona, Spain. He worked at the Goethe University Frankfurt as a lecturer and research assistant for Visual Culture Studies. His works were recently exhibited in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea in the Museum Pfalzgalerie, Germany at the Independent Istanbul Trienniale, Turkey, in Amsterdam and New York.