Christian Megert, born in 1936 in Bern, is a Swiss visual artist and a member of the German 1960’s Group ZERO, who greatly expanded key influences of the movement in Switzerland both through his own work and academic teaching.
He attended the School of Applied Arts in Bern from 1952 to 1955 and undertook from 1956 to 1960 extensive study trips to Berlin, Stockholm and Paris and attended the local arts and crafts schools.
Megert had his first exhibition in Bern in 1956. He created monochrome material and structural images, as well as sculptures made from iron and synthetic resin. At the end of the 1950s he began incorporating mirrors as his main medium to experiment with the reflective effects of light, creating illusionary constructed environments and dynamic art spaces challenging the viewer’s perspective and sensation of continuity and infinity.
The diverse properties of mirrors allowed Megert to explore the themes of multiplicity of reflection, luminosity, translucency, and aspects of image- fragmentation and transformation of one’s immediate visual surroundings.
In 1961 he wrote his manifesto ”A NEW SPACE” on the occasion of an exhibition in Copenhagen. The manifesto was a call ”to rethink everything spatially with the help of art.” He has had several exhibitions with the ZERO-group, with which he created a series of environments and kinetic objects. Megert created his first spatial environment in the same year, a mirror room, which was installed in the gallery of the Copenhagen artist friend Addi Køpcke. One wall of the room was hung with mirror squares that multiplied fragments of space and visitors, creating new spaces in endless synthesis.
