October 25, 2009

Gustav Metzger is a Truth Excavator

Gustav Metzger, an artist and political activist, created the term "Auto-Destructive Art" to refer to this work against nuclear weapons and industrial wastage. Metzger is an 83-years old artist-political activist. I see him as an archaeologist of the constructions of the modern world, from cultural safe houses to environmental battlefields. He is the original truth excavator, seeping through the media dirt to present the key ingredients of a common, continual story.

Metzger's artistic carvings serve as an antithesis to the mindless media world. His exhibition of his newspaper stockpile, accumulated since 1995, can be viewed below. In a recent interview he said;
"What we plan to do here will be the biggest demonstration of newspapers. We started collecting in 1995. The visitor will be invited to go to the pile, take out a single paper, and, if they see a page relating to the credit crunch or extinction, they are asked to put it on a stand. At the end, the selected pieces of newspaper will be returned to the original newspaper. So we are using the content of this archive without destroying it. It should not be defaced by tearing pages out. Nothing will be torn; everything will be maintained. "