In a Futuristic Merzbau: “Kurt Schwitters: Merz” @ Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, Switzerland |

In a previous post on this site we attempted a comparison between a fashion collection and Kurt Schwitters' collages. Fans of the artist may be happy to hear that there is a retrospective exhibition entitled "Kurt Schwitters: Merz" currently on at the Galerie Gmurzynska, in Zurich.

The gallery is located in the same building complex that once housed the famous Galerie Dada, run by artists Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball (the city celebrates 100 years of DADA this year).

The event features around seventy works across all media, among them seminal paintings and sculptures, but, being organised in curatorial collaboration with Adrian Notz, the director of Cabaret Voltaire where the DADA movement originated in, it also includes sections devoted to archival documents covering Schwitters' excursions in other disciplines, such as poetry, theatre, stage design and sound, plus artworks by his friends that complement and contextualize the German artist's practice.

This could actually be considered as an exhibition within another exhibition since the gallery space is completely transformed by pieces designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid. The abstract and futuristic smooth shapes created around the walls pay homage to Schwitters' Merzbau, inviting visitors to conceive the gallery space as an artwork in itself.

The gallery and Hadid have a long-standing connection: a while back the architect suggested indeed to Galerie Gmurzynska to offer a grant to restore a damaged agricultural building – the "Merz barn" – located at Elterwater, in the north of England.

Besides, seven years ago Hadid transformed the spaces of Galerie Gmurzynska into a Suprematist environment in reference to Kasimir Malevich. Like him, Schwitters influenced Hadid, but this event also prompts visitors to consider the artist as an inspiration for many other creative minds, including David Bowie and Damien Hirst.

As pointed out in a previous post, Schwitters' Merzbau could be considered as a series of abstract dioramas, a room of jutting angles and immersive shapes and silhouettes, a sort of life-size three-dimensional ever-shifting and expanding collage.

This architectural Merzbau can be interpreted as an open dialogue between the past, the present and the future: different languages, layers and materials combine in Schwitters' collages, creating intricately complex presentations of ideas. In 1948 Schwitters stated "a MERZ picture starts with the material, every possible material for painting and uses it as paint".

In this case the materials in "The Double Picture" (Assemblage, 1942), "Die Frühlingstür" (1938) and in his untitled collages and reliefs set the tone for a visual dialogue made of shapes: simple pieces of rough wood or yellowed paper in Schwitters' work, become embedded into the sinuous waves built around them, in a process of mutual adaptation of forms.

In a recent post we mentioned collages as inspiring artworks for fashion designers and this exhibition offers many ideas, suggestions and solutions to design fans keen on experimenting on clashes of different materials, shapes, forms and disciplines as well.