Gerhard Marx’s poetic and philosophical visual language is composed through a physical engagement with distinctive material traditions. His process entails careful acts of dissection and rearrangement, which allow Marx to engage the poetic potential and philosophical assumptions of his chosen material in the process of developing original drawing, sculptural and performative languages. A primary focus in his work engages physical depictions of space – ‘spatial imaginaries’ – with an interest in how these descriptions of space affect and shape that which it describes. Marx uses acts of fragmentation and reassembly to construct alternate and deliberately complicated spatial propositions that aspire to hold multiple positionalities, doubled presences, folded histories, spaces that exist across, in between, and amongst.

Completed in 2022 was Locus (Richmond), a public sculpture for the small town of Richmond in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Previous public sculptures include Vertical Aerial: JHB (Hollard, JHB); The World On Its Hind Legs, a collaboration with William Kentridge (Beverley Hills, LA); The Fire Walker, in collaboration with William Kentridge (Queen Elizabeth Bridge, Johannesburg); and Paper Pigeons, in collaboration with Maja Marx (Pigeon Square, Johannesburg).

Marx’s work has been shown at international art fairs (Art Basel, Frieze London, FIAC). It is held in numerous public and private art collections, and was included on the South African pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Recent theatrical work includes scenography and costumes for Lara Foot’s reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Othello for Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus (2022) and Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre (2024) and the Arts Centre, in Abu Dhabi UAE (2025).

Marx completed his undergraduate degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and received his MFA (cum laude) from Wits School of Art, Johannesburg, where he was a full time member of staff between 2003 and 2007, lecturing in both the Fine Art and Dramatic Arts Departments. Marx is a fellow of the Eckard Residency, the Sundance Film Institute, the Annenberg Fund and the Ampersand Foundation. He is based in Cape Town, South Africa.