Principally, the artist's intervention is so designed that the other people in this situation (at first pedestrians on the street, later visitors in museums and galleries) are enabled to share a lively experience. The "subjects" of performances and installations are never alien to their location; rather, it could be said that they are identical with the location in a different aggregate state. In this respect Gerz seems to continue the work of the French situationists whose détournements of the early 1960s came close to performance art.

Herbert Molderings 1984

This memorial policy, reliant upon bricks, mortar, and objects, is haunted by oblivion. In 1971 Gerz lived near another museum, located in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes. You must take great care when showing what you hide. Piece for a Window Cleaner is a series of 16 photographs depicting a window cleaner in the natural history museum’s Grande Galerie de l’Evolution. The window cleaner is seen at the top of the building cleaning huge blackened windows letting in no light. Windows through which you can see nothing at all — just the reflection of the sky on their surfaces. A beyond. A boundary, or demarcation line.

Octave Debary 2017

La politique mémorielle de l’objet et de la pierre est travaillé par l’oubli. En 1971, Gerz habite à côté d’un autre musée, au Jardin des Plantes à Paris. Montrer ce que l’on cache, il faut bien le faire, prendre soin de ce travail. Pièce pour un laveur de carreaux montre seize photographies d’un laveur de carreaux de la grande galerie de l’évolution du muséum d’Histoire Naturelle à Paris. Le laveur est photographié en train de travailler en haut de l’édifice, il lave d’immenses vitres qui ne laissent pas entrer la lumière (les vitres noircies du musée). Des vitres à travers lesquelles on ne voit rien — sauf le ciel qui s’y reflète. Un au-delà. Une ligne de séparation, de démarcation.

Octave Debary 2017