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   Like some recipes in the history of cooking, the entire Mertz experiment came about by accident. In the winter of 2001, I took a box of old radio parts, set up an improbable combination of vacuum tubes, diodes and knobs, and set out to explore a technical problem that was vexing me (and still does) -- how bright can I make a painting and still have room for the highlights? The vacuum tubes in particular, with their silver interiors and glass skins, afforded the ultimate in gleaming surfaces, so I had a splendid time just getting the metallic colors right. As I was finishing what seemed like an exercise, and felt that I had learned what I could from the junk in front of me, I was surprised to see the little world I had arranged taking on an entirely unintended persona. It looked like something more than a still-life; in fact, it started to look like a little cityscape. 

     From there I decided to set up another collection of machine parts, bottles, and appliances -- the older and rustier the better -- and began an elaborate junkyard/cityscape composition. I wasn't sure what it was, exactly, so I searched my memory to name my new picture. The chaos of the set-up reminded me of Dadaist collages, and in particular those by Kurt Schwitters. I recalled that he had invented a kind of collage with machine parts and garbage, and they were called MERTZ, so I decided to pay homage to this by titling my picture Mertz Number 1. The problem was, when I went back and checked some books about Schwitters, I found that it was MERZ and not MERTZ. Nonetheless, I decided to stick with my faulty memory, and probably made Dada artists happy in their graves.

     My other source for MERTZ was first Chardin , and then American painter Walter Murch, who I see as the modern continuation of the Chardin spirit . Both Murch and Chardin have a special way of taking very ordinary things -- for Chardin it meant the simple utensils of an 18th century kitchen; for Murch it meant a carburetor -- and then transforming them into something utterly unexpected. This miracle is one of the chief reasons for making any painting, but I have found it especially true in still life. MERTZ seemed a perfect way to explore this idea.

     An entire series of the works followed, which I will continue until I stop painting. Throughout the series, certain ideas have emerged. First, I would call Mertz an attempt to expand the genre of the still-life into the realm of landscape, cityscape, and, in a certain way, diorama and set design. Instead of merely showing a table or flat surface with things on it, I try to build different layers of space, with immediate foreground objects one "looks past" (repousser in landscape), then near, middle and very far-away distance. Why, then is this still-life painting? Because everything in a Mertz painting, with the exception of far-distance buildings or clouds, is observed in my studio the same way an artist would observe a traditional arrangement of fruit. Even the color of the sky is not something made up, as I go to great lengths to use painted drops behind the objects, or sometimes I will get the same effect with colored lights or theater gels. As one can imagine, this takes a considerable amount of space to arrange, and , worse, even more room to store all of the junk.

     Second, I have enjoyed the way content has entered into the series, in particular the creation of an "underworld" beneath the objects -- a kind of hellish furnace-- in contrast with a cheerier earthly paradise (or heaven) above. In other cases, the pictures seem to comment on a general disenchantment with science, progress, and industry. Thus, some pictures have structures that look like impossible towers from Fritz Lang's Metropolis or , better, Terry Giliam's Brazil. In one picture, I staged an absurdist religious ceremony with kitchen appliances as high priests, and pots and pans as the adoring congregation. Or, sometimes there is no narrative, just machines lumbering on for no clear purpose.This "Rube Goldberg" element, however, is less of a criticism of the machine age, and more of a celebration of it -- or , more precisely, my childhood idea of what might be going on behind the walls of a huge factory. In fact, my childhood memories are a big reason for all this, as I remember making block cities, and then adding my Mom's pots and pans to make water towers or mechanical monsters.

     I have been a bit embarrassed to find such pleasure in placing unrelated things on the tops of kitchen appliances to make....something else! but that is what seems to be the driving force here. I feel free to make up a world completely on its own terms and logic, and as a result, I make them aesthetic playgrounds as well. Making a Mertz painting truly is like making a collage, where three-quarters of the way through a picture I will suddenly see the need for a dark red accent here or a shiny thing there, and because MERTZ is no strict disciplinarian, I have no trouble finding what I need in my studio junkyard.

    I have no reason to think that I will run out of gas on this subject, as it continues to surprise me. I hope the viewers of MERTZ feel the same.

John Morra, August 2012