Ari Merten CV, Email
Ari Merten (*1987, GDR) is an intermedia artist and educator based in Berlin. Their practice revolves around music, exploring personal history, identity, and collective experience.


Selected Work:


Concert Love Songs for a new Future 2021
Video
Sketches for a new Love Song 2021

Music/ Video
Cake/ Bel Air 2020

Performance
Peeling Fruit in front of Strangers  
2020

PerformanceNudes 
2019

Installation
Clitorian Reading Room2019

Visuals
Bodies of Discourse2017

Performance
 What’s Good?2017

Meisterschüler Project
Heroes (Rework)2015

Diploma Exhibition
Poptraumatic2012

Diploma ExhibitionPoptraumatic
2012

Exhibition Booklet (PDF) with a text by writer Johanna Maxl

My diploma exhibition at Galerie Jochen Hempel in Leipzig featured five works, most of which I created specifically for this context, all revolving around the vinyl record as a central motif. I was interested in translating the strategies and phenomena of pop music into the realm of visual art, examining them within a new conceptual and spatial framework.

Psychoanalysis played a central role in both the creation and interpretation of the works. The pieces spanned a range of media—from traditional printmaking and sculpture to an expansive video installation. Each work operated at the intersection of pop-cultural references from music, film, and fashion, and more subjective, emotional expression.

Repetition, absence, emotional overwhelm, rupture, and destruction—core characteristics of psychological trauma—emerged throughout the works, not as direct representations, but as formal and affective structures.

The exhibition offered a space for reflection on the vinyl record—not only as a nostalgic or iconic object, but as a medium through which aesthetic, psychological, and pop-cultural discourses could be explored.









Concept & Realization: Ari Merten
Photos: Enrico Grunert
Special Thanks: Sebastian Kretzschmar, Johanna Maxl, Jochen Hempel
Year: 2012

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