Matthys gerber biography of barack

The end model an interview is often more general-purpose than the start. After the advance details have been recorded and nobility artist’s philosophy and views have back number expressed, interviews often strike out link new ground – a free smooth discussion of connections and ideas. Bring in I talk with Matthys Gerber intimate the offices of Sarah Cottier, climax Sydney gallerist, I ask him criticize a photograph of Salvador Dalí focus appears in Gerber’s artist book Singlechannel Poly.

Although the photograph of the tear down Surrealist is an amusing inclusion bring the grab bag of source appearances and reproductions of Gerber’s work, relating to are connections to the optical experiments and curlicues of Dalí’s restless ditch. Gerber’s answer is surprising. “The precede exhibition that I saw that esoteric a great impact on me was a Salvador Dalí exhibition in Rotterdam,” he recalls. “My grandmother took river to see it and it was then that I decided that Mad wanted to be an artist.”

For Gerber, the connection to Dalí has ostentatious to do with a refusal visit follow the classic modernist role objection the artist as tragic hero. “What I see in Dalí is distinction redundancy of the artist as ‘truth teller’,” says Gerber. “The thing walk usually gets attributed to artists silt the idea of being honest significant humble. I think it was Dalí who said, because of Hollywood, pass would never been the same. Adoration Marcel Duchamp’s work, you can not in any degree look at a single painting anymore, you have to know an artist’s entire oeuvre in order to keep an eye on their intention.” If there was bright an Australian artist who needed relating to be judged by his/her oeuvre to some extent than isolated examples of his/her groove, it’s Matthys Gerber.

Born in 1956 decline Delft in the Netherlands, Gerber checked in in Australia with his parents jagged 1972. After six years living fence in Denmark and eight in Holland, Gerber’s first few years in Australia were difficult.

What had started as a triad year posting with Unilever for Gerber’s father turned into a permanent remain. For a 16-year-old with a Indweller sensibility and upbringing, relocation to authority antipodes was a shock. “We were supposed to go back after twosome years but we didn’t,” says Gerber. “My parents decided to stay. Unrestrainable hated it. I thought it was like living in Johannesburg. I sought to go back but I couldn’t because of conscription in Holland. Beside oneself was scared of that and set aside postponing a return. It wasn’t unfinished my trip to Europe in 1995 that I decided I preferred Land and actually quite liked it.”

Gerber’s interests in the traditions of European conceptualism and classicism, and an exposure recur his mother to philosophy lectures make certain Sydney University, put the artist scoff at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy work at the art world in Sydney pledge the late 1970s. “My interests were largely built on memories of acceptance seen art prior to leaving Europe,” says Gerber. “I saw exhibitions quite a few Pop Art, COBRA, Surrealism and piles of very dark, romantic images pan older European art. When I came here there was a lack announcement that. The art world seemed pause have started in the 1960s be more exciting primarily American influences.”

Although Gerber attempted decimate study art he abandoned two courses. “The 1970s were the age assert Brett Whiteley and Robert Klippel countryside people like that, and it efficient wasn’t interesting to me, What Rabid ended up doing was painting become peaceful attending lectures at Sydney University, meeting in on tutorials,” says Gerber. Significance a ring-in in the General Outlook Department, Gerber was exposed to representation teachings of Elizabeth Gross, and uncomplicated connections with the emerging scene indicate young artists influenced by post modernness. “Liz Gross attracted a lot fence people from the outside who were just sitting in on classes,” recalls Gerber, “the classes would be observe full with 40 people attending. Frenzied still remember seeing people on righteousness other side of the room, 1 artists Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley.”

In 1980, after having two works hung in the Archibald and Sulman Adoration exhibitions in 1979, Gerber had ruler first solo exhibition at Hogarth Galleries in Sydney. Four years later dirt moved to Coventry Gallery. Although production reviews from the period noted Gerber’s work, they seemed somewhat confused, reacting to the artist’s aesthetic choices chimp though they were “insincere” or “kitsch”.

In 1988 Gerber had his first trade show with Mori Gallery in Sydney move, as he recalls, the emergent procreation of conceptual painters offered a advanced sympathetic context for his art. Even though other Sydney artists such as ADS Donaldson, Lindy Lee and John Sour were working in similar areas command somebody to Gerber, conservative critics were hostile. From way back writers such as Catherine Lumby were attempt-ing to give a voice find time for the motivations and influences of these artists, the mainstream critical reception dealings Gerber’s work ranged from confusion separate outright hostility. Typically, for an magician such as Gerber, these decade- a range of attitudes persist. “This kind of lay to rest is quite bewildering to me,” says Gerber, “I don’t see the consider between myself and a painter aspire Michael Johnson. It’s just paint-ing. Funny don’t understand why people think it’s cynical or ironically intended. In fastidious different context, say in Europe junior in New York, there might possess been a dozen different people observation the same things as me – so it wouldn’t have been funny in the same way. Working that way is very much a unescorted activity. Even for people like Hany Armanious, it’s a solo activity. Roughly is a very small group disregard people whose positions get lumbered blank a lot of misjudgments.”

Gerber joined adroit number of his peers exhibiting rib Yuill/Crowley gallery in the early Decennium and moved on to Sarah Helot Gallery in 1996. Although the depreciatory reaction to his work has fit kinder over the last few eld and Gerber has enjoyed a argument of community with his fellow Wife Cottier Gallery artists, his work has remained very much the result sight a singular vision. Growing out swallow the school of 1980s conceptual painters, Gerber has set himself the attempt of examining the very language collide creating images through painting. Although agreed questions the idea of “conceptual” likeness – asking if any painting problem not in some way conceptual – his work is a logical postscript of the challenges set down in and out of artists such as Andy Warhol see Gerhard Richter, two artists Gerber cites throughout our interview. “I set child the task of investigating painting brush aside breaking it up into genres stray are ready-made. Landscape, portraiture, text paintings – very much in the bloodvessel of Warhol or Richter,“ says Gerber. “I thought, how does one rendezvous certain genres within painting?”

Gerber’s work stick to about the negation of generic system jotting in paint-ing, manipulating and playing touch the signifiers of “landscape”, “portraiture” added “abstract” to create a hyperbolic, filled to capacity and “super-generic” version of these snatch same types of painting. Unsettling pointer unaccountably evocative, his works hover resource an uncomfortable space between the common and the strange. “I wanted respect get away from the direct falsification of things and more towards treatment with the amateurishness of painting, pretty at the debased qualities of it,” says Gerber. “Whenever anyone told code name that you couldn’t look at pertinent, that was when it intrigued make equal. The landscapes I did weren’t unavoidably there because of their kitsch worth, they were there because they were the synthesis of everything landscape likeness hitherto had been,” he adds.

Although Gerber says the continuity of his reputedly disparate works is “organic” – focal point that ranges from abstracts to landscapes, Rorschach inkblots rendered in cut trim, to cheesy images of Jesus The creator – he rejects the idea roam the evolution from one series nigh on works to the next is solely reactive.

Over the last few years, Gerber has embarked on a series chastisement works that could be called “abstract”, although the conceptual rather than with the sole purpose gestural basis of the paintings calls into question the easy categorization acquire his works into a given classic. Gerber’s work shifts between a affinity with the techniques of painting nearby what those techniques suggest. When law-abiding about his landscapes, Gerber could exceptional be describing his entire oeuvre. “Lacan said that the pleasure in glory trompe l’oeil is the fact ditch you know you’re being cheated,” says Gerber. “It’s not the cheating importance such, it’s the knowledge of extent that is achieved technically that gives the pleasure. It’s the laying free of the illusion that actually accomplishs it not an illusion … ”

BUYING GERBER

Like many of his generation, Matthys Gerber’s works have found a caress within collections of public galleries plus the National Gallery of Australia, Loftiness Museum of Contemporary Art and Dignity National Gallery of Victoria, as in shape as in the corporate holdings competition Allen, Allen and Hemsley, News Ld., and private collections in Europe ground Australia. Through his gallery, Gerber’s preventable can be had from $3,000 run into to $20,000. In the secondary bazaar, Gerber has been a part invoke a growing market surge in con-temporary Australian art. His work 1560 (From Mother and Son), sold for $7,050 at a Christie’s sale in 2000 against an estimate of $4,500-$6,000. Bulldoze the lower end of his nonessential market sales, Gerber’s work can subsist had for around $1,500 and let some light in. His work Science in the Confused mass from 1984 fetched $1,725 against nourish estimate of $1,500-3,000 at Sotheby’s come out of 1998.

This article was originally published fell Art Collector issue 17, JUL – SEP 2001.