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Kendell Geers
Hellraiser
Installation view, ADN Galeria, Barcelona
KENDELL
GEERS
Hellraiser
Exhibition curated by Pierre-Olivier Rollin and ADN
Galeria
Opening
on Friday, November 25th, 2011, at 7.30 p.m.
Exhibition from November 26th, 2011 to January 14th ,
2012.
ADN Galeria will open on November 25th
the solo show Hellraiser by Kendell
Geers, curated by Pierre-Olivier Rollin, director of
B.P.S.22 in Charleroi, Belgium, and ADN Galeria.
Kendell Geers’ work formulates a critical and
iconoclast standpoint almost atypical in the contemporary
artistic landscape. As the main line in his work, the notion
of power comes out in representations that deal directly or
metaphorically with issues like violence, religion, moral,
sex, discipline and fear. Geers undermines the system of
values set by our Western society and harshly reveals some
aspects that are usually left in the dark: struggles for
power, racism, coercion, injustice, exploitation of the
weakest, feigned puritanism.
Far
from the moralist, right-thinking tone that characterizes the
so-called “political art”, Geers presents himself instead as a
“terrorealist” (according to his own formula) who indecently
exposes reality without distorting ideological filters. He
doesn’t hesitate to use forms and expressions which provoke
for their violence and their authoritarian or sexist character
to unsettling the ideals of racial, ideological or religious
purity. While relying on recurrent visual motives and humble
materials (glasses stick on various supports, statues wrapped
into the adhesive tape used by the police to circumscribe
crime areas, black painting or ink dripping, construction
materials), Geers’ works appear like signs that interfere and
destabilize a system which legitimacy is based on the tacit
omission of its dysfunctions.
As
Pierre Olivier Rollin, curator of the exhibition observes: “in
this exhibition, the artist will articulate some works
realized in the last years along with his most recent
production: drawings, sculptures, paintings, sculptural
surfaces, installations, wall paintings. The exhibition
synthesizes a series of concerns that have permeated the
artist’s practice since his beginnings: the conjunction of
extreme positions, the transformation of images and objects,
the political reinterpretation of ready-made, minimalism and
conceptual art, the alteration of senses, the aporia of
language. Assembled in a large “cluster hanging”, works from
various periods, media and expressive forms will compose an
extended installation, increasing their levels of
understanding. The works’ layout deliberately opens a
multiplicity of interpretations that bring the works in their
deep coherence and ramifications.”
The
works exhibited at ADN surprise for its communicative
efficiency: they are simple and determined, well structured
and visually attractive. The aesthetic dimension of the works
functions as a counter-weight for their provoking and violent
contents. This ironically recalls us that violence is also
“glamorous”, and produces fascination and addiction. The title
of the exhibition, Hellraiser, plays with this dual vision of
a figure that is desired just for being powerful and
dangerous. A large wall painting takes the well-known “LOVE”
pattern of Robert Indiana and turns it into a weaving of
graphic signs to compose the Spanish coloquial word “COŃO”.
The same impression of latent threat emanates from an
installation composed by bricks suspended over the visitors’
head. Several sculptures in bronze reproduce some typical
motives of Geers’ visual and symbolic field of references:
religious, political or popular icons like the Belgian
“Manneken Pis”, variations on African statues, daily objects
with fingerprints or moldings of parts of the artist’s body.
The display also includes a series of interventions on images
appropriated from magazines and a new series of pornographic
drawings that play with the voyeuristic condition of the
spectator, who sees her/himself reflected on the support of
the artworks.
The
whole selection of pieces relies on black humor and obscenity;
it shows the artist’s clear predilection for a bitter use of
blaspheme and a smiling and caustic provocation. Language
itself, as an essential component in Geers’ work, has a double
face: the enigmatic phrases appearing in his drawings or
painted on the walls hide standard words and concepts which
have often been “stolen” from artistic or political
discourses. Geers ill-treats and transforms language, aware of
its ambivalence and properties to manipulate the public.
Facing the works, the spectator has no other choice than
confronting his/her own adhesion to this phantasmagoric script
and his/her level of involvement and enjoyment.
Despite his iconoclastic tone, the artist’s expression
is rarely univocal, since he keeps his own position ambiguous.
Likewise, his biography and personal mythology follows the
same scheme of ambivalence; from his identity as white man
born and raised in South-Africa and militancy against the
regime of the Apartheid, to his own decision to adopt 1968 as
his symbolic date of birth, Geers exploits his personal
history and constructs for himself a fictional character,
while the discourses of the art establishment utilize these
inputs to render, in turn, as a subversive icon.
ADN Galeria
c/
Enrique Granados, 49
SP-08008
Barcelona
Spain
T: +34
93 451 0064
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