Gerhard Bär works exclusively with plastic waste to create design objects, light installations and art that redefines the way we perceive lavish consumption and confronts us with challenges around environmental pollution. 

Works of Gerhard Bär can be found in prestigious collections and museums internationally, such as Museum of Philadelphia, the Vitra Museum in Weil am Rhein, Die Neue Sammlung, Munich  and in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

“In the beginning there was not design. In the beginning there was waste. And anger. Hecatombs of plastic waste that had been collected by the Dual System from German firms and households since. Added to there anger was their archeological curiosity about our mountains of waste which, like the heaps of fragments from antique excavation sites, contain a wealth of history – layer upon layer of the traces left by the material world and living habits of a modern industrial society with its changing consumer preferences that are characterised by the spirit of the times, designer fashions and marketing trends. And then, there was the desire to experiment – the stubborn search for technical processes that would make it possible to save the individual composition and historical nature of plastic waste and give it a new existence.

 This approach – at times a fanatically pursued desire to reveal and disclose – is what sets Gerhard Bär apart from earlier or parallel attempts made for instance by Anna Castelli Ferrieri or Jane Atfield. In a long form-finding process designs were developed to comply with the specific nature of the materials. In the extreme case, there are also cushions consisting of transparent plastic covers filled with cleaned but otherwise unprocessed plastic packaging waste. This is where the circle closes to Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art, from which Gerhard Bär consistently shows that supposedly useless things can, in fact, be reused. His objects arise like a colourful phoenix from our mountains of waste.”

(Prof. Dr. Florian Hufnagel,

Executive Director, Die Neue Sammlung, Munich)