Kendell Geers

Kendell Geers is a South African conceptual artist.

Kendell Geers
Kendell Geers at Haus der Kunst, 2013.
Born
Jacobus Hermanus Pieters Geers

Johannesburg, South Africa
NationalitySouth African
EducationWits, Johannesburg
Known forConceptual art, installation art
Notable work
Akropolis Now

Life

Kendell Geers was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, into a white working-class Afrikaans family during the time of apartheid.[1]

Becoming aware of the political struggles in his country, he ran away from home at the age of 15 to get involved in the anti-apartheid movement and also to move away from abusive alcoholic members of his family who worked as police officers.His mother passed away when he was younger due to similar reasons as that.[2] Kendell Geers finished his schooling at the end of 1984. At the beginning of 1985, to avoid conscription, he enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg for a Fine Arts degree.[3] In 1988, Kendell Geers was one of 143 young men who publicly refused to serve in the South African Defense Force and faced either a life in exile or six years' imprisonment in a civilian jail.[4] In 1989, he left South Africa and lived for a brief period in exile in the United Kingdom and New York where he worked as an assistant to artist Richard Prince.[5]

It was only after Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners' release from prison, that Geers could return from exile to Johannesburg without fear of being imprisoned. In 1990, he returned to Johannesburg where he worked as an artist, and art critic, curator and performance artist. The first work of art he created back on South African soil was "Bloody Hell", a ritual washing of his white Afrikaaner Boer body with his own fresh blood.[6]

Rejecting everything his family and his community stood for, in 1993 he changed his name to Kendell Geers and his date of birth to May 1968 as a political act, reclaiming his identity.[7] When Geers had changed his name, he also promised to avoid speaking Afrikaans and to wear black as much as often as he could in order to express his newfound identity as a "quintessential African", someone who considers themselves black on the inside regardless of heritage.[2]

He moved to Brussels in 2003.

Work

Although sometimes he is described as a political artist, he does not like this label for himself because for him, political artists were ones who trumpet on about who they voted for and what they stand for.[8]

Kendell Geers is known best for using a variety of colors and materials that signal danger such as sirens, broken glass, and barbed wire in an attempt to examine power structures, social injustices, and establishment values. Geers has worked with different media ranging from objects to large scale installation, neon works, performances and video. Geers also uses words as a means to explore the coding and reinterpretation of language and its meaning and to communicate with his audience. Kendell Geers creates simple situations: simultaneously embodying a thought and the product of the process, his work often functions more where people try to reconstruct what has happened and then try to find their own connection to that understanding.[2] Kendell Geers' artwork is stated to be significant in which they "confront the past".

Most of Kendell Geers artwork showcases in visceral, raw emotion where words fail. He tries to "create pieces in which viewers have to accept responsibility for their presence in the work of art. They are always free to walk away or move on, but if they decide to engage with work then the process becomes an active one". Geers' works create a physical presence and about performing a specific effect rather than depicting it.[9]

Kendell Geers centers his work around death and disruption because he believes that everyone experiences death at least once in our life. The knowledge, fear and theories of that experience appear in most cultures in the world. He is drawn to the taboos that govern death and sex, because they center around beginnings as well as endings, in both we are unable to control ourselves, no matter who we presume ourselves to be, rich, educated or even sophisticated.[10]

Early work

His artwork covers a wide range of media, including installations, sculpture, drawings, video, performances and photography, combining both African and European elements in his art, for example drawing an animism, alchemy, mysticism, ritual and socio-political activism.[11]

His work had heavily political elements from 1988 to 2000, during which time Geers, explored the moral and ethical contradictions of the apartheid system through his practice.[12] He developed a visual vocabulary characterized by provocation as well as humor by using found objects such as barbed wire or glass shards. By appropriating historical events and ideas, he focused on questions of relationship between individual and society. It was in this context that Geers changed his date of birth to May 1968, the start of the student and civil revolution, and joined every political party in the period before South Africa’s first democratic elections, from the extreme right-wing to the Communist party.[13] In this way, he expressed his doubts about the fetishization of party politics.

He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1993, the first time since the anti-Apartheid boycotts that South African artists had been invited.

Kendell Geers created an art piece called Bloody Hell, when he was back in South Africa after he had been exiled, a ritual washing of his white body with his own fresh blood.[14] From 1999 until 2004, Geers worked as the curator and art consult for Gencor which was later bought out by BHP Billiton. The collection focused on artists and works of art that were central to the Anti-Apartheid Movement spirit.[15] In 1997 Geers edited and published Contemporary South African Art, with essays by Okwui Enwezor, Olu Oguibe, and others.[16]

Initiated by his move to Brussels in 2000, his later European period is characterized by a more poetic aesthetic.[12] Here, Geers transferred his incendiary practice into a post-colonial and increasingly global context, suggesting more universal themes like terrorism, spirituality, and mortality. As such, the artist’s life and work can be said to constitute a living archive composed of political events, photographs, letters, and literary texts that serve as a source of inspiration and represent a continuation of his oeuvre.[17]

In January 2013 a Geers retrospective called "1988–2012" opened at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.[12] The exhibition divided his life and work into two decade-long periods, the first political phase until 2000, and the later more poetic phase. Kendell Geers' works are a part of 60 permanent museum collections and since 1988 has taken part in more than 400 exhibitions all around the world.[11]

Manifesto

In 2011 Geers wrote a Manifesto in which through a series of statements, he explores the link between political and natural revolutions, mourns the loss of our talent for revolution and the underlying causes, and gives us clues on how to remember our inner selves to live a more true life.[18]

Side projects

Together with musician Patrick Codenys (Front 242) Kendell Geers formed the Belgium Audio-Visual group "thefucKINGFUCKS" in 2007. The project grew out of the now defunct "Red Snyper" collaboration between Geers and Codenys.

Exhibitions

He has exhibited globally since 1993 and participated in numerous exhibitions including Documenta, the Carnegie International, Havana Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Kwang Ju Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Lyon Biennial, Glasstress at the Venice Biennale, as well as presented solo exhibitions in the CCA Cincinnati, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst Gent, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art,[19] Aspen Art Museum, MOCA in Rome, Migros Museum, Palais de Tokyo, the CAC in Lyon and Haus der Kunst in Munich. The Divine Comedy. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists -Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt/Main, 2014.

Kendell Geers created a solo exhibition at the Goodman Cape Gallery and offered a smaller intervention at YOUNGBLACKMAN, an intimate shopfront area in Roeland Street, opposite the Kimberley Hotel, frequently holding many artists, creative and other bohemian characters. YOUNGBLACKMAN mostly plays host to experimental, edgy art activities. Geers decided to in a way repeat his 1993 action of throwing a brick through a gallery window, the results of which, including shattered glass, being the artwork exhibited. For this incarnation he threw several bricks through the front windows, instead of just one brick, including one brick left outside the gallery with a threatening note to the artist.[20]

Kendell Geers more notable solo exhibitions include, IN GZI WE TRUST', Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2019–2020); The Second Coming (Do What Thou Wilt)', Rua Red, Dublin, Ireland (2019); ‘#iPROtesttHEReforeIam', ADN Galeria, Barcelona, Spain (2019); 'Voetstoots', Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); AfroPunk', Rodolphe Janssen and Galerie Didier Claes, Brussels, Belgium (2017); The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', Chateau Blandy-les-Tours, Melun, Paris, France (2012); National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2010); GUEST + A HOST = A GHOST', Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England (2010–2009); Irrespektiv', Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (2009); 'REAM', Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA (2009); 'Not Something Else', Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto, Japan (2009); Monsters and Stuff', Gagosian Gallery, London, England (2008) and 'Hung, Drawn and Quartered, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, USA; toured to Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, USA (2005).[21]

Bibliography
  • Argot. Chalkham Hill Press, 1993.
  • Contemporary South African Art. Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1997. ISBN 978-1-86842-039-1.
  • My Tongue in Your Cheek. Dijon: les Presses du réel; Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002. ISBN 2-7118-4374-2.
  • Kendell Geers. Mondadori Electa, 2004. ISBN 88-370-3050-9.
  • "Kendell Geers; The Forest of Suicides." published by MACRO, Museo D'Arte Contemporanea, Roma, 2004. ISBN 883-7-03050-9.
  • Fingered. Imschoot Uitgevers, 2006. ISBN 90-77362-33-9.
  • "Irrespektiv." BOM / Actar, 2007. ISBN 978-84-934879-5-9.
  • "Kendell Geers 1988–2012." Edited by Clive Kellner, Prestel, 2012.
  • "Hand Grenades From My Heart". Edited by Jerome Sans, Blue Kingfisher, Hong Kong, 2012. ISBN 978-988-15064-7-4.

References
  1. "Salon | Artist Talk | Manifesta 9: FIRED UP by Kendell Geers", YouTube video.
  2. Whitt, Joseph (2002). "The Passenger Kendell Geers's Art of Terror". Art Papers: 23–27.
  3. Warren Siebrits,States of Emergency 1985–1990, "Irrespektiv." BOM / Actar, 2007.
  4. Merret, C., Saunders, C., in Switzer L., Adhikari M., South Africa's Resistance, Ohio University Press, 2000, p. 473.
  5. Clive Kellner, Kendell Geers 1988–2012, Prestel, 2012, p 11
  6. Sans, Jerome (2012). Hang Grenades From My Heart. Blue Kingfisher. pp. 23–43. ISBN 9789881506474.
  7. Nicolas Bourriaud, Kendell Geers: A Proletarian Gnosis, Kendell Geers 1988–2012, Munich, Prestel, 2012.
  8. Geers, Kendell; Sans, Jerome (2012). "Hand Grenade for My Heart". Blue Kingfisher Limited.
  9. Watt, Liese Van Der (2005). "Witnessing Trauma in Post-Apartneid South Africa: The Question of Generational Responsibility". African Arts. 38: 26–93.
  10. Byvanck, Valentijn; Farrell, Laurie (2003). Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora. Museum for African Art.
  11. "Kendell Geers". Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
  12. Reitter-Welter, Barbara (9 February 2013). "Hinweis warnt vor Kendell-Geers-Ausstellung". Die Welt.
  13. "Exhibition traces the shift and the development of Kendell Geers' aesthetic language". Art Daily. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
  14. "Kendell Geers". MARCO.
  15. Sue Williamson, South African Art in the Nineties: Part I, II & III, Artthrob
  16. Contemporary South African Art, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1997, ISBN 978-1-86842-039-1
  17. "haus der kunst".
  18. Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies 27(6), An Van Dienderen & Kris Rutten, 2013, pp. 655–660.
  19. "Baltic Museum Presents Kendell Geers". Design Taxi. 3 August 2007. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
  20. Lamprecht, Andrew (2011). "Cape Town 2010: Smashing Shopfronts". African Arts. vol. 44, no. 2: 32–41.
  21. "Kendell Geers". Stephen Friedman Gallery.
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