ALBERT MERZ ROUGE+BLEU NO:1214 - 28.11.1975

ALBERT MERTZ, who is exhibiting at Galerie S:t Petri, Lund, from November 14 to 28, 1975, was born in Copenhagen and now lives in Paris.
He has consistently worked experimentally across many fields such as painting, graphics, collage, montage, photography, film, radio, and television.

At Galerie S:t Petri, the project ROUGE + BLEU No. 12 is presented — a work Albert Mertz has been developing over a period of eight years, with shorter and longer interruptions.

ROUGE + BLEU is an attempt to, through the technique of painting, transcend painting itself and turn it into an expressive neutral material presence.
The project consists of two identical squares placed together so that they form a rectangle — or a rectangle divided in the middle.

According to Mertz, the square is the most neutral of geometric forms (there should be one large square — a small square remains a square).
In the exhibition in Lund, the left square is RED, the right one BLUE.
Mertz argues that red and blue are the most recent and least associative colors.
Naturally, he says, like all other colors they can evoke subjective associations, but they remain RED-BLUE.

Albert Mertz further states:

“Red and blue contrast tonally like black and white, and chromatically like warm and cold.
They work against each other and, in some cases, can flicker optically and thus cancel each other out.
They can never harmonize.
One therefore perceives the two squares — one red and one blue — as mutually connected, even though structurally they are distinct.
Hence arises a far-reaching dissolution of pictorial meaning.
With these form-and-color structures (repeated infinitely), an attempt is made to create something material that is not a sign, symbol, or expression, but pure presence.”

This neutrality gives the viewer the possibility to “use” the work based on their own individual conditions rather than those of the producer.

The painting shown at Galerie S:t Petri further seeks to liberate ROUGE + BLEU from pictorial form by existing as a physical presence in a fixed space — a presence that dissolves through the viewing situation itself.
It is presence in a current situation and a current space that is primary.

The exhibition is open weekdays 15:00–20:00, Saturdays and Sundays 12:00–17:00.