Biography

Today, Ingo Gerckens is known for his ‚painterly‘ works, which know no limits in the use of materials, and his production process which, through its permanent media breaks and re-sampling, further formulates the themes and relevance of panel painting in the digital age.

In this context, reference must be made to the concept of Slow Painting, as well as to the notion of the so-called Dark Age of Information, in which panel painting acquires a renewed significance. Through his transformations across media and materials, Gerckens addresses fundamental questions: Where does form establish context, and where does the act of translation and transposition into other media dissolve it? Ultimately, how does a panel painting assert itself amidst the omnipresence of moving images?

The evolution of new media, the shifting paradigms of perception and communication in the wake of social media, and the increasing role of artificial intelligence in text, image, and film constantly redefine our vantage points for observation, classification, and interpretation. As the acceleration of these technological developments intensifies, the stability of any fixed perspective becomes increasingly tenuous. This accelerating dynamic places our cognitive faculties under growing strain, forcing us to navigate an ever-changing landscape of visual information.

Gerckens’ work engages precisely with these complexities, probing the capacity of the panel painting to sustain meaning in an age of visual saturation. At what point does an image lose its identifiable subject? When does it become so abstracted that it eludes linguistic articulation? And where is the threshold at which we, as beings trained in visual perception, engage in an act of pure looking—a gaze that remains fixated yet struggles to decipher meaning? How do we emotionally endure the inability to name what we see?

In recent years, Gerckens has returned to themes of landscape and spatial environment, turning his attention to landscape painting as a site of inquiry. His radical approach—wherein any material or medium serves as a vehicle for image-making—manifests itself here as well, particularly in his incorporation of pre-existing paintings by other artists into his own compositions. In this process, Gerckens expands the conceptual framework of his work, entering into a pictorial dialogue with other artworks. This engagement unfolds across a temporal spectrum, as the integrated works frequently originate from earlier artistic periods. The resulting compositions foster an interaction between abstraction and representational tradition, forging a discourse between contemporary and historical contexts

other personal topics

Ingo Gerckens‘ career is characterized by a wide range of interests and skills. In addition to producing classic images, paintings and installations, he also worked on product development in companies founded for this purpose. He developed a product line of lights in cooperation and produced a 3D children’s film in the early 2000s. Until 2010 he regularly took part in exhibitions and developed his own artistic language.

After the birth of his second child, he interrupted his artistic career in order to consciously concentrate fully on his family. The interruption lasted a total of around 20 years. In most cases, such a break basically ends the artistic development path and is not continued.

In the case of Ingo Gerckens, however, it is clear that by resuming his artistic work, he is using this very break as an opportunity and looking at current events „like an ignorant person“. He starts „from the beginning, from zero“ with his examination and questioning of image worlds, contexts and surfaces and the values ​​and feelings associated with them.