Pierre Mertens paints like a monk who patiently and repetitively makes hand written transcriptions of the bible. He is as a cleaning lady with a feather-duster going from one object to another. Covering banality, but at the same time accentuating the object in its surroundings. Jan Hoet (Curator Documenta IX)
How we use art to improve our social status, we often forget about the rest, the second, third and fourth world. It is exactly these worlds Pierre Mertens refuses to forget. Marc Ruyters ( H art)
By enacting the Peruvian landscape he is making an important comment on how official art travels and pointing out how these so called international art festivals repeat the same sets of artists. Rachel Greene(author ‘Internet Art’)
Pierre Mertens chooses images of outdoor kilns in Peru as a backdrop for his on line collage- a parody of other art extravaganzas. Suzanne Muchnic (Los Angeles Times)
The function of the college as a social and communicative space became the red line. Pierre Mertens’s interventions interweave in various ways with students’ and staff usage of the building. Contrary to traditional attitudes towards public space, Pierre Mertens’ s representations are not punctuation marks in the interpretation of the building, but are accents. Johan Pas (art historian) his speech
Pierre Mertens proves in his interventions that he reflects about art. He takes spiritual and consequent decisions. Painting is an instrument to act. Bart De Baere (M HKA)
Pierre Mertens helps us to look to a Reality, to THE Reality indeed. Without his help looking at IT would make us blind. ‘THE reality’: can it be pointed at in another way than saying it is about the spectral explosion of light when its beams illuminate the darkness of the indissoluble interwisting, wherein we all came into being? Can it be pointed at in another way than repeating again and again that THE Reality is is about the spectral diffraction dissolving the darkness of the intertwined two-unit whence we all came from and wherein we always long to disappear into again? Jan Cambien(Psychoanalyst) his speech here
Above our marital bed, for a number of years, Pierre Mertens’s big carpet has been hanging out, it is a scrambled bacon, a tormented appearance of raw meat and passionate drift, it mirrors infinitely throughout the room. Dangerous, but with style. And it works, it works! Drik De Wachter (Psychiatrist) His speech here