Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Kendell Geers grew up in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Born in
a family of Afrikaners (migrants of Dutch origin), he received a Catholic
education from his father after the divorce of his parents. Soon, he started
resisting any form of authority, rejected the colonial past of his family at 15
and becoming an anti-apartheid activist. Forced to leave South Africa,
following his refusal to do military service, he went to New York where he
became assistant to Richard Prince. In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released,
he returned to Johannesburg and worked there for ten years before finally
leaving his country of origin to settle in Brussels, where he eventually gained
Belgian citizenship.
This personal story, that of an Afrikaner "too white in Africa and
too black in Europe", has profoundly marked his work. Some emblematic
pieces attest to this: Counting Out Song
(a.k.a. Tyre),
monumental sculptures of tractor tyres evoking lynching by fire; T. W. (Fence), barbed wire barrier blocking access to a museum; Hanging piece, a vast installation of bricks hanging from the ceiling, recalling the
techniques of urban guerrilla warfare; or Self-portrait, bottle shard from a Dutch Heineken beer; or the famous video
installation T.W. (Shoot), showing a frantic compilation of film
sequences where the actor shoots in the direction of the viewer. As a
multidisciplinary artist, Geers created objects, installations, video works and
created numerous performances. He continually explores and criticizes our world
in a direct way by warning against the alienation, the subversion or the
obvious, that the objects, images and situations from our daily life can
generate.
In the late 80s, Kendell Geers worked on the links that can be
established between forms of conceptual or minimalist art and political issues.
In this sense, he has fully participated in this tendency of contemporary art to
reintegrate a ‘political’ content to the forms inherited from minimalism and
conceptual art and which have sometimes been described by the paradoxical
formula as ‘minimalism policy’. This was the case with some emblematic works,
such as Mondo Kane, a square of concrete bristling with shards
of a bottle; or T.W.
(Showcase),
quadrangular glass case, broken by a brick thrown through the window; or the
work called The Garden of the Forking
Paths, a vast
watchtower of concrete and barbed wire. The monumental work Monument to the Unknown Anarchist summarises his anxieties: it’s a burned car,
burning during the exhibition, turned over on a pedestal covered with bottle
shards. Testimony of urban insurrection, it symbolises any form of revolt,
whose legitimacy varies according to places, periods of history, and ruling
classes. Opposed to any form of authority, Kendell Geers intends, by this
symbol, to bring to light the revolt of the unknown, history’s forgotten
actors, by questioning the viewer on the legitimacy of such an act.
Kendell Geers has taken part in numerous
international exhibitions such as the Lyon Biennale 2005, Documenta XI,
or Dyonisiaque, at the Pompidou Center. He participated in
the first Johannesburg Biennale and the exhibition Hardcore. Vers un nouvel activisme, at the Palais de Tokyo. He had numerous
solo exhibitions in the most important international institutions and is
presently in most major international collections. In 2007, he had a major solo
exhibition, organised simultaneously at the BPS22, in Charleroi, and at the
SMAK in Ghent.
