One Word. Two Words

In the same way as with other artists close to the visual poetry approach, in Gerz' work a questioning of art emerges from an abyss of linguistic elements, which open up a space "like between the lines of Mallarmé".

Marion Hohlfeldt 2002

The notions of culture and life, as they are conveyed in his work, might be understood as a form of the "essential dualism" characteristic of the western (humanist) tradition of thinking, in which paired notions such as culture/nature, subject/object, spirit/matter, mind/body, and self/other, are brought in relations of antagonism or exclusion (or even extermination). Gerz, however, does not perpetuate the image of them as the "two" that should become "one", he deconstructs the opposition by introducing a "third" which destabilises the recognisable and easily manipulated "two".

Bojana Pejic 1995