IT WAS EASY

ES WAR EINFACH

C'ÉTAIT FACILE

CR 344. Year 1988

Wv 344 372 421 It Was Easy Abb 344

It was easy to quote
It was easy to fake desire

The conversion of enchantment to bitter disillusionment is most evident in his series It was Easy (1988), …For the generation born after 1940, coming to terms with fascism is not merely a question of coming to terms with the past; it is not limited to a specific period of history, but is rather a matter of daily lived practice.

Doris von Drathen 1992

The images form enigmas forcing us to rely on our own imagination and memory to complete the picture, while the text directly addresses the viewer. … Gerz recalls the unsettling truth that, collectively, in the face of totalitarianism, man has a tendency to comply or become indifferent, rather than act upon his will.

Bojana Pejic 1993

The ambivalent reality of his photographic images supports his strategies of absence. Fragments of lived reality, these images explore the limits of existing definitions of art. In black and white, they are already an abstraction, a shadow, something incomplete. So too, the neutral voice is pervasive here ("It was easy to win." "It was easy to plunder the loot." "It was easy to make laws for people." "It was easy to make soap out of bones."). This neutrality is in keeping with one who has always practiced an amoral oscillation, not only between different media but between contrary sets of meanings.

James Campbell 1994

Mixed Media Photograph

Mixed Media Photograph 2 framed b+w photographs, each 40,5 x 50,5 cm, 1 framed text (typed on paper, enlarged photograph), 40 x 12 cm, total 82 x 69,5 cm

The text is typed in three languages.

Courtesy Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach

Exhibitions

Mönchengladbach 1988. Paris 1988. Mönchengladbach 1989. Mönchengladbach 1991. Montréal 1993 (Meaux 1993)

Bibliography

I: Düsseldorf 1988, p. 97. Mönchengladbach 1989, p. 27. Mönchengladbach 1991. Montréal 1993, pp. 18-19, 22-23, 27

II: Drateln 1989, p. 43. Red. 18, 1991, p. 48. Beil 1993, p. 40. Chaban-Delmas 1993, pp.16-17. Duncan 1993. Marchand-Kiss 1993, p.122. Pejic 1993, pp. 12-13. Viau 1993, Campbell 1994, p. 25

V: Bachinger 1988, p. 39

Access to general bibliography

My name is Jochen Gerz