A girl in a white dress stands on a rocky shore with her back to you. Out past the break, a white horse is standing in the surf, not moving. Behind it a gutted apartment block comes straight up out of the water, all busted windows and salt stains, and the grain is heavy enough that the edges of everything break up.
The piece is called WATCHERS. The caption underneath it reads, in full: WATCHERS. then mertz, 2026. No prompt, no model, no tool list, no thread explaining how it was built.
mertz — "WATCHERS.", on Instagram (@mertzv2)
The day job has forty names on the call sheet
mertz's Instagram bio reads "Art Director & AI Artist," and the art director half is verifiable. On June 29, 2026, SEVENTEEN's THE8 and VERNON released their debut subunit single as V8, and mertz is credited on the video under 3D VFX — alongside @himia.digital, @antiantiart_, @aaa.postproduction, @jeddlingo and @ANGEL333ONLINE, with animation by @chippy_zone.
That video was directed by BRTHR, the duo who have shot for Travis Scott and The Weeknd, with Bleu Min Su as creative director and Ambience Seoul producing. Korean coverage described the finished thing as a demolition derby in the desert — flying cars, monster trucks, a chimeric horse, CGI robots. It is loud, sunlit, full-colour commercial work with a first AC and a crane operator and forty other people in the credits.
Their own posts also claim VFX work on a Latto video directed by hidjiworld, from March 19. I could not confirm that one outside their account, so take it as their word rather than a verified credit.
mertz — 3D VFX on THE8 x VERNON's "singasong," directed by BRTHR. Via Instagram (@mertzv2)
The art practice has nobody in it
Set that against the personal feed. Night, monochrome, one figure, no crew, no collaborators named. Black and white, heavy grain, one thing in the frame that shouldn't be there — sometimes the horse, sometimes a building where the sea should be. Nothing is sharp, and the damage is part of the picture rather than something to clean up.
Every post gets a title in caps with a period on the end — CHAOS, LAKE, DREAM, ZAMAN, WATCHERS — then a line break, then the same two words: mertz, and the year. That is a gallery label. Title, artist, year, and nothing else.
It is not a recent affectation either. The same signature is on work from 2025, including a piece called "Silent Horizon." Whatever this is, they have been doing it the same way for at least two years.
ZAMAN., from March 25, 2026, is the one that travelled furthest — around 293,000 likes. Two people in an embrace on a fallen tree over black water at night, her dress the only bright thing in the frame, the grain so thick the water reads as static. It is the only number in this piece, and it is here for scale, not as a verdict.
mertz — "ZAMAN.", on Instagram (@mertzv2)
LAKE. breaks the monochrome
LAKE., from August 14, 2026, drops the black and white. A ring of fire hangs in the air over a night forest, close enough to the ground that it lights the trees orange. Horses walk the near bank. One small figure stands on a stone bridge, lit blue, watching. The colour is smeared and low-fidelity — softer and dirtier than the monochrome work, and further from photographic.
Two days later came CHAOS.: a man on a camel in the foreground, a pyramid half-swallowed by dust, and a formation of helicopters coming in over the top of it. The posting rhythm and the register do not change when a post lands quietly.
mertz — "LAKE.", on Instagram (@mertzv2)
What the grain is doing
Push an image that far and the details stop being legible, which means your eye fills in the apartment block, the horse, the face. A cleaner render shows you exactly what the model decided. These make you do some of the deciding.
The era choice does similar work. Nothing in frame is dated later than about 1975 — the dresses, the concrete, the fire, the sea. Set the work back that far and nobody in the picture can be holding a phone, and nothing has to compete with a memory of what last week looked like.
Where the work lives
Instagram, and effectively only Instagram — around 586 posts, verified, with the follower count somewhere between the 303,000 and 428,000 that different sources report, which is its own argument for not putting the number in the headline.
If this register is your thing, we've covered an artist working in the same faded, dreamlike range before. And for the other half of what mertz does — personal art posts running alongside real commercial credits — YZA Voku's award-winning short films and brand work sit in the same territory.