Gerhard Lang (born 1963 in Jugenheim an der Bergstraße, Germany) is a German visual artist and performance artist.

Life and work Gerhard Lang studied at the University of Kassel from 1985 to 1992, where he took classes in graphic design and illustration with Hans Hillmann and Gunter Rambow, experimental photography with Floris M. Neusüss, and strollology with Lucius Burckhardt. He moved to University College London in 1994 and completed his MA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1996 under Stuart Brisley and Stephen Bann.

Lang was invited to documenta 14 in 2017, where his contribution Transitus was based on a walk he had conducted with Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt and students of the University of Kassel in 1993. His work has been included in international group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery in London (Spectacular Bodies, 2000), where he was one of eight contemporary artists shown alongside Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Marc Quinn and Christine Borland; the 46th Venice Biennale (1995); MoMA PS1 in New York; the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, where his Mobile Zebra Crossing was shown as part of Actions: What You Can Do With the City (2008); the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Vereinzelt Schauer, 2013); the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg; the Wende Museum in Los Angeles; and the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, where his work was shown alongside Francis Alÿs, Adrian Piper and Pipilotti Rist in Walk This Way (2024–25).

Lang's work deals with landscape, perception and drawing. Rather than treating landscape as a given natural space, he approaches it as a cultural phenomenon shaped by habits of seeing. A characteristic element of his practice is the link between bodily experience — particularly walking — and the act of drawing; in series such as the Cloud Walks (1993 onwards) and the long-running Visus Signatus drawings he records clouds and other atmospheric phenomena while looking at the sky rather than at the paper. For the project Nubi Tempora (2017) Lang worked from the roof of the German Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst) in Offenbach, pairing his hand-drawn cloud observations with raw meteorological data collected in the building below.

He lives and works in Schloss-Nauses (Otzberg) and London.

Selected exhibitions 2024–2025: Walk This Way, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg 2024: Counter/Surveillance, Wende Museum, Los Angeles 2024: Radical Matter, University of Applied Arts Vienna 2023: Clouds. From Gerhard Richter to the Cloud, Stiftung Kunst und Natur, Museum Sinclair-Haus, Bad Homburg 2022: Street Life, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen 2020: Living the City, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin 2020: Intermedia – Mong Kok, Creative Art Center (Baptist University), Hong Kong 2018: Dialogues with a Collection, Laure Genillard Gallery, London 2018: Simulacra ex speculis, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna 2017: Transitus, documenta Halle, documenta 14, Kassel 2017: Wie entdecken Entdecker, Unpacking Burckhardt programme, documenta 14, Kassel 2017: Unheimlich schön. Stillleben heute, Museum of Modern Art Carinthia (MMKK), Klagenfurt 2017: Nubi Tempora. Wolkenlandschaften, Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach am Main 2013: X Architecture Biennale, São Paulo 2013: U. F. O., Museum of Site (MOST), Hong Kong 2013: Vereinzelt Schauer – Formen von Wetter, Frankfurter Kunstverein 2011: Science & Fiction, Kunstmuseum Solothurn 2010: Actions: What You Can Do With the City, Graham Foundation, Chicago 2008: Actions: What You Can Do With the City, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal 2007: Say it isn't so, Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen 2005: Future Face, National Museum of Science and Technology, Taiwan 2003: Head On, Science Museum, London 2002: Das zweite Gesicht, Deutsches Museum, Munich 2001: Phantom-Bilder, Staatliche Museen/Neue Galerie, Kassel 2000: Spectacular Bodies, Hayward Gallery, London 2000: Transact 2000, museum in progress, Vienna 1998: Natural Science, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh 1997: Heaven, PS1, New York 1997: Art / Science, Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1996: Happy End, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 1995: Identità e Alterità, Venice Biennale 1993: Palaeanthropische Physiognomie, Senckenberg Natural History Museum, Frankfurt 1989: Auf der Suche nach Schlemhils Schatten, Fridericianum, Kassel 1989: 3rd International Photo Manifestation for the 150th Anniversary of Photography, Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam

Select awards and fellowships 2018: Artist in Residence, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna 2017: Fellowship, Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts 2012–2013: New York City studio fellowship, Hessische Kulturstiftung, Wiesbaden 2010–2011: Research fellowship, Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt Foundation, Basel 2009: Fellowship, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn 2004–2007: Sciart Award, Wellcome Trust, London 1999–2000: Fellowship, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London 1998: Exhibition grant, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Stuttgart 1996: Julian Sullivan Award, Slade School of Fine Art 1989: Photo Award '89, 3rd International Photo Manifestation, Amsterdam

Selected publications Counter/Surveillance. Ed. Marieke Drost and Joes Segal. Wende Museum, Culver City 2024, . Street Life. Ed. Astrid Ihle and René Zechlin. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2022, . Living the City. Ed. Lukas Feireiss, Tatjana Schneider, TheGreenEyl. Spector Books, Leipzig 2020, . Transitus. In: aneducation – documenta 14. Archive Books, Berlin 2018, . Nubi Tempora. Wolkenlandschaften. Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach am Main 2017, . Unheimlich schön. Stillleben heute. Ed. Christine Wetzlinger-Grundnig. MMKK, Klagenfurt 2017, . Lexikon der Raumphilosophie. Ed. Stephan Günzel. WBG, Darmstadt 2012, . Art and Fear in the Contemporary World. By Caterina Albano. Reaktion Books, London 2012, . Science & Fiction. Ed. Barbara von Flüe. edition Fink, Zurich 2011, . TransAct. Ed. Cathrin Pichler and Roman Berka. Springer Vienna/New York 2010, . Actions. What You Can Do With the City. Ed. Giovanni Borasi and Mirko Zardini. CCA/SUN, 2008. Ways Around Modernism. By Stephen Bann. Routledge, London/New York 2007, . Say it isn't so. Ed. Peter Friese et al. Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen 2007, . Kunst nach der Wissenschaft. By Susanne Witzgall. Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2004, . The Molecular Gaze. Ed. Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York 2004, . Luft. Schriftenreihe Forum, vol. 12. Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2003, . Das zweite Gesicht. Ed. Cornelia Kemp and Susanne Witzgall. Prestel, Munich 2002, . Spectacular Bodies. By Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace. University of California Press, 2000, . Happy End. Ed. Marie Luise Syring. Kunsthalle Düsseldorf / Wienand Verlag, Cologne 1996. Identità e Alterità. Figure del Corpo 1895/1995. Ed. Manlio Brusatin and Jean Clair. Venice Biennale 1995, . Lucius Burckhardt. Design ist unsichtbar. Ed. Hans Höger. Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 1995, . Palaeanthropische Physiognomie. Ed. Gerhard Lang. Deutsche Fototage, Frankfurt am Main 1993, .

External links Official website Interview with Isa Bickmann: Zwischen der Kunst und den Wolken (in German) Gerhard Lang at Deutscher Wetterdienst Gerhard Lang at Ocula

References