For the exhibition [elemɛnˈtaːɐ̯], Max Mertens turns to the four elements: air, fire, water and earth. But behind this apparent simplicity lies a much bigger question: how do we inhabit a planet that our activities are transforming at an unprecedented speed? And what role can art and artistic creation play in a changing world? The exhibition thus calls up the idea of the Anthropocene, the term used for an era in which human activity has become a major force of change in the Earth system. The concept refers to upheavals in the climate, the loss of biodiversity and changes in soils, oceans and atmosphere.
Although we find ourselves in the midst of particularly brutal current events, Mertens does not set out to make an ecological manifesto. He does not name a culprit. He does not speak of the Capitalocene. He does not tell us how to think. Instead, he puts us in a situation where something is happening before our eyes. And it concerns us. The works include a tree bent by two industrial fans, a burnt-out crate, a greenhouse and blocks of ice slowly melting, and the exhibition ends not on catastrophe but on growth and renewal.
Biography
Max Mertens is a sculptor, but of a particular kind: a sculptor of movement. In his work, volume does not simply occupy space. It moves and transforms. The sculpture is therefore never quite finished. It is a process, existing in time as much as in space.
This conception of sculpture belongs to a lineage that runs through, among others, his teacher, the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, in whose class Mertens studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Born in Luxembourg in 1982, the artist has worked since the early 2000s across sculpture, installation and drawing, with a particular interest in how a work can change our relationship to space, to objects and to our own presence.
Centre d'art Nei Liicht
25 Rue Dominique Lang
L-3505 Luxembourg
