Gerhard Mantz

About this Series:

In the series, the viewer enters the Earth after a major event. Whether it has been an explosion, that has covered the forests under a perfect thin layer of ashes, or a complete freeze of nature due to cold and frost, is not defined. The places that Gerhard Mantz shows in his virtual landscapes are not real places but landscapes of the soul. The strength of the pieces lies in their alienation and their ambivalence. Due to their brightness, they seem fragile and magic. Since the series is only executed in black and white, the light contributes an important part to the composition. It can be promising but equally be the blinding light of an explosion, a harbinger of a desaster.

Gerhard Mantz adds with his completely computer generated works a very contemporary position to the subject of landscape. Reminding at natural landscape views at first glance, his images refer through elements of alienation such as surface structures or irregularities of software to their creation process beyond real situations. They resemble archetypal landscapes that existed or will exist in far temporal distance, leaving the viewer in ambivalence confronted with the absence of any other living being and with the perspective of a lonely and often even threatened human being on nature.  (Galerie [Dam]Berlin)

Gerhard Mantz’s Website

Gerhard Mantz at Galerie [Dam]Berlin