Kendell Geers lives and works in Brussels and London.
Kendell Geers’ work is strongly infl uenced by the social and political conditions which could (and still can) be found in South-Africa, namely the apartheid. Therefore, he continuously uses a wide variety of different materials deriving from the political and he often utilizes a violent mode of expression to articulate his artistic points of vue. His art is characterized by a multiplicity of media used (objects, installations, videos, performances), but in a very coherent way. Geers calls himself a “terrorist” in the field of art, i.e. through his art he wants to take a fi rm stand: He explores and criticizes our world in a very confrontational manner by turning his gaze to the phenomenon of alienation which he discovers in many objects, images and situations of the everyday. However, this critical positioning does not end up in a one-sided approach. On the contrary, it constantly questions the conditions of good and evil and the interdependance of these principles which underly all things. By also adressing himself to moral and political issues as an artist, Geers refl ects on the way exhibitions works, on the conditions of art in general and on artistic institutions as well as their protagonists in particular. Finally, through his art Geers enters life in a very comprehensive way and negotiates its bright and dark sides and its “dangerous beauty” which he searches in his personal experiences and which he always places before his art.
“Irrespektiv” is the title of the exhibition which the Museum of Contemporary Art Lyon has produced together with the SMAK, Gand (Belgium), the BPS 22, Charleroi (Belgium), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art,Trente (Italy) and the Baltic Flour Mills, Newcastle (UK).
This European show, always changing in each museum, represents the first extensive retrospective of the artist. It covers different aspects which run like red threads through Geers entire oeuvre, e.g. questions of geography, linguistics, politics, society, sexuality and psychology. On the occasion of the show at the museum the artist has specially created new artworks for the exhibition space.
2008
