Kendell Geers

Johannesburg, South Africa, 1968. Currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. The work of Kendell Geers formulates an atypical and critical desacralizing discourse in the current artistic panorama. The notion of power, the central axis of his work, is revealed in representations that directly or metaphorically evoke subjects such as violence, religion and spirituality, morals, sex and the body, discipline and fear. His productions question the West’s fixed system of values, pointing to elements such as the struggles for power and class, racism, the ideals of purity, history, injustice or inequality. Based on recurrent visual motifs and through the use of humble materials (aluminium foil, black ink, construction materials) the works of the artist intervene, de-stabilizing pre-established values and inviting a re-evaluation of the historical and canonical. Kendell Geers enters the artistic scene in the nineties and since then his career has expanded with exhibitions and his presence in many biennials and institutions. Centres such as Appel Arts Centre (Amsterdam), the Maison Rouge in Paris, the Haus der Kunst (Munich), the Palais de Tokyo (París), and biennials such as the Venice Biennale, and those in Johannesburg or Istanbul, for example, have housed his work. His work has recently been exhibited in the B.P.S.22 in Charleroi, in Frankfurt MMK, the SCAD Museum of Art (Georgia), the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington), the CA2M – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Mostoles (Madrid), as well as the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in India, amongst many others.