"Dangerous Liasons "

Katerina Gregos, Contemporary, No 70, 2005

The first time I saw Kendell Geers work I was struck by its unforgiving, confrontational character, but also its raw energy and feeling of edginess, elements that have defined his practice. Over the years Geers has consistently explored life, contemporary history and its power structures and has not shied away from delving into dangerous moral and psychological grounds. Though his work is informed by his South African background and his experience of living under apartheid, it is by no means limited to this but rather explores the wider implications of the abuse of power, violence, oppression, control as well as the collapse of belief systems and ideologies, using all possible media.

Geers also probes the basest of human instincts and primal impulses such as paranoia, fear, guilt, desire, sexuality. Ultimately, what lies at the core of his work is human nature and its fallibility and fragility. Through references to history and culture, the artist focuses on the unsavoury aspects of reality, and probes the areas where the worst of human nature might be repressed. Although it would be a mistake to label him a political artist, his work definitely is characterised by a strong socio-political conscience, and he often places a moral dilemma at the forefront of his investigations.

At the same time Geers also aims to alert us to the ways in which we consume images and the meanings of cultural icons and symbols. For example, for the series The Twilight of the Idols, he bound iconic figures such as Christ and Buddha in chevron tape, turning their aura on its head and transforming them into fallen heroes for the late capitalist era. Like many of Geers sculptures, these too function as embodiments of an ideological structure. Here bound, gagged, and packaged, the traditional meaning of the holy icons seems to have collapsed. A question hangs in the air: what do these icons really mean today?
Geers often borrows, appropriates, or hijacks images or objects in order to shift contexts and meanings and uses such destabilising tactics to alter the familiar and ultimately question the values that surround it. If his work is iconoclastic it is so in a way that urges us to question the real meaning of that consumed habitually whether product or idea. Hence the meanings of his work must be sought in the conceptual and ideological space that his objects infer to.
The implications of danger or of being put under a potential threat are also part of Geers strategy to challenge the passive consumption of art and to animate the safe haven of the museum or gallery. Being placed in situations of possible violence or aggression is not only a destabilising tactic but an urge to empathise, to truly think of the what if? scenario. This is perhaps best evident in one of Geers recent works The Forest of Suicides, a labyrinthine room filled with concrete shelves from which pieces of broken glass protrude threateningly. In navigating this space, one is forcibly made aware of its physical implications and of ones own body within it. As much of his work this, too, is about thrusting the viewer into a state of alertness but also about challenging the safe distance that often exists between viewer and artwork. Ultimately one could say that Geers is, in effect, creating a situation where a dangerous liaison is created between viewer and work, whether physically or mentally.

Other works operate in a less physically confrontational manner, and instead play more with the mechanics and subtleties of language such as his neon pieces for the show TerroRealismus at the Migros Museum in Zurich. Here the psychology rather than the imagery of violence is explored. Three neon signs were presented (T/ERROR, D/ANGER, B/ORDER) in which the first letter switched on and off thus altering the meaning of the word and sparking off a host of ideological questions. In other instances, Geers work operates in that space beyond language where words are no longer adequate to express a situation, emotion or state of mind such as TW (Scream) a looped scene of a scream from the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or TW (Shoot) an video installation of shooting sequences from Hollywood films where the viewer is literally trapped in the crossfire. The distillation of horror and violence, respectively, in these works is indeed indescribable here, as it operates on a primeval level. Although Kendell Geers does not offer easy answers to many of the questions and dilemmas that he poses, perhaps the most potent aspect of his work is that he demands a response, or more importantly a position, from the viewer. This, to me, is one of the most important things art can do.