Kendell Geers describes his practice as AniMystikAKtivist because it is rooted in African animism, informed by European mysticism and expresses an activist approach to making art in an age of social, political and ecological emergency. The artist believes in art because it changes the world – ONE perception at a time.
The Flesh of the Spirit sculptures are the materialization of spirit and the spiritualization of matter at the crossroads between perception and experience. At first glance they appear to be African but if you take the time to look closely at the details you will see the traces of his fingerprints, the cast of his palm and ridges between his fingers because they all begin as liquid plaster of Paris slipping through his hands. As the plaster begins to harden, he presses and shifts it into sculptural form like a seer conjuring spirit. Once the plaster has dried the artist cuts, glues, carves and remoulds it into works of art that bridge the abyss between Europe and Africa.
Geers was born into a family of Flemish sailors who settled in South Africa three and a half centuries ago and so he is as quintessentially African as he is European. The contradictions of his identity have inspired the chimeric eclecticism of his practice which destabilizes all our assumptions about language, race, culture, identity, aesthetics and art history. The result is a code of art historical references reworked into his own unique and uncategorisable language that is difficult to define, because what you see can never be reduced to what you get. He embraces abstraction whilst at the same time explores what it means to be figuratively human. Kendell Geers is a trickster whose work is a treasure for the true connoisseur and delight for the curious of mind.
Currently based in Brussels, Geers has established himself as a pioneering figure of contemporary African art, gaining international recognition early in his career with notable participation in the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale as well as Documenta 11 in 2002, curated by Okwui Enwezor. In 2013 Enwezor also curated his second retrospective at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He has participated in the Johannesburg, Venice, Havana, Sao Paolo, Moscow, Taipei and Istanbul Biennials as well as Documenta, Manifesta and the Carnegie International.
The inter-texuality of his work and research has also translated into curatorial and art historical projects. In 2019 he curated IncarNations for the Bozar, linking the work of contemporary African artists with African traditions.
His latest book “Duchamp’s Endgame: da Vinci, Dürer, Ingres, Poussin” is published by Fonds Mercator and distributed by Yale University Press. It is a passionate tale about the fundamental mysteries of what the work by the Godfather of Dada and Pope of Surrealism. For the first time since the Summer of 1912, Geers opens our eyes to exactly what Duchamp was doing in Munich and why he stopped painting in 1919. The mystery has been hidden in plain sight for over a century because every work of art he made holds the key to understanding another work of art.
