25th October 1998 – 10th January 1999
Working with an array of media, this first major exhibition of Gustav Metzger’s art included works ranging from liquid crystal light projections, auto-creative inventions, auto-destructive documents, and nine large-scale historical photographic pieces.
As an artist resistant to the commercialism sometimes involved in gallery exhibitions, this was the first survey of the often elusive artist’s work, and looked across a broad range of his art from the 1950’s onwards.
The Auto-Destructive Art movement he helped pioneer attempted to challenge the inclusion of art in a culture of consumerism, the idea being that art that destroys itself cannot be bought or possessed – it consumes itself.
As a result, some of the work featured in the exhibition at Modern Art Oxford was re-created from past performances, including the artist’s abstract ‘paintings’. These involved Metzger using acid to ‘paint’ onto nylon and glass, resulting in the said materials dissolving. Created for the first time at the South Bank, London, in 1961, Metzger re-staged this demonstration for the opening of the exhibition, the distorted material that remained forming part of the final exhibition.