ERASE / THE PAST

The largest letters of ‘THE PAST’ correspond to the smallest of “ERASE”. Nothing fits together.

Doris von Drahten 1992

The work was done for Berlin, where Gerz was born and lived as a child through World War II. He divided the piece in two: Erase, installed in the Galerie Anselm Dreher in the western part of the city… The second part, The Past, shown in the Galerie Vier in East Berlin… Only in memory did the piece become one. For Gerz, the unification of Germany doesn’t mean that the past (two pasts) can be immediately resolved.

Andreas Vowinckel 1992