
Kendell Geers
Overview
Employing a wide range of references — from the realms of history of art, pornography, iconography and kitsch — Kendell Geers questions artistic value and mocks the notion of originality. His work reveals razor-sharp humour that plays with the viewer’s repulsion and ridicules racial or religious stereotypes.
Employing a wide range of references — from the realms of history of art, pornography, iconography and kitsch — Kendell Geers questions artistic value and mocks the notion of originality. His work reveals razor-sharp humour that plays with the viewer’s repulsion and ridicules racial or religious stereotypes.
Kendell Geers was born in South Africa and now lives and works in Brussels. At the 1993 Venice Biennale he officially changed his date of birth to May 1968, a momentous year in world history for human liberation and equality. Geers creates work that aims to disrupt commonly accepted moral codes and principles. Laden with complex and deep political implications, it is challenging and confrontational. At the same time, Geers’ minimalist aesthetics generate a subtle poetic undertone. His use of language, ready-mades, neon, glass, icons, film, chevron tape and other objects confront the viewer head on. They often startle the eye and require a degree of interrogation from the spectator.
Geers’ work was exhibited in the 2022 Setouchi Triennial, and in the 2021 Bruges and Kortrijk Triennials in Belgium. ‘Love, By Any Means Necessary’, the sixth solo exhibition for the artist at Stephen Friedman Gallery, opened in February 2020. A major retrospective of his work curated by Okwui Enwezor was held at Haus der Kunst, Munich in 2013. He participated in Documenta 14 in 2017 and Documenta 11 in 2002 in Kassel, Germany. Geers’ work was included in the Venice Biennale in 2019, 2007 and 1993.
