Downtown, Los Angeles
Gustav Metzger
And Then Came the Environment
Hauser & WirthBorn in Nuremberg to Polish-Jewish parents, Gustav Metzger (1926 – 2017) fled Nazi Germany to England via the ‘Kindertransport’ when he was 13. When he began his art studies in 1945, he entered a world inspired by scientific experimentation, just as the Atomic Age—in all its paradoxes—dawned. Over seventy years, through his writing, calls to action and art, Metzger wrestled with the contradictions of his time by championing how both ‘auto-destruction’ and ‘auto-creation’ in science, ecology, politics and art were equally important tactics to address the state of humanity. Gustav Metzger. And Then Came the Environment is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and his second major show in the US. The title comes from Metzger’s 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ where he proclaims an ‘urgent need to redefine notions of nature and the environment,’ because ‘environment’ is a term that ‘has been hijacked by the forces that are manipulating the world’ and it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’ The show features seminal early experiments developed with scientists, such as ‘Dancing Tubes’ (1968) developed in the Filtration Laboratory of the University College of Swansea and ‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ (1965) which was one of the earliest public demonstrations of what would become Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD)—now omnipresent in our computer, telephone and watch screens. For the first time an animation has also been commissioned in response to Metzger’s writings. Artist Justin Richburg—who created the animation for Childish Gambino’s hit ‘Feels like Summer’—produces a short in response to Metzger’s ‘Damaged Nature’ manifesto.