There are times in history when subterfuge, cynicism and double meanings dominate discourses and ideologies. The early years of the 20th century were particularly dark and turbulent, years of crisis at all levels in which the only possible reaction was through fury: “Punch yourselves in the face and drop dead.” That was the end of the sixth of the seven manifestos written by the Dadaists.
A little later and with the situation still unresolved, Luis Buñuel also sought not only to “épater le bourgois” but to awaken the spectator from his lethargy, to make him uncomfortable and to make him react. And his strategy could not be more effective: “The Andalusian Dog” begins with a memorable scene in which a man holds a razor (Buñuel himself) and dissects a woman’s eye. Indifference has no place, and neither does comfort. In 1973, Bruce Nauman followed the same tactic to shake the viewer in an engraving in which the following warning appears inverted: “Pay attention mother fuckers”.
The first decade of the 21st century is proving to be as turbulent as the 20th century, but perhaps less clear. There has not been a great war that has swept away everything, but many and very subtle transformations that have made the ground of certainties break beneath our feet. “Sorry, we’re fucked”, writes Kendell Geers about a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.
These days we meet again with Kendell Geers who presents a magnificent exhibition of his work at the ADN Gallery in Barcelona. His way of working and his forms of presentation could not be more pertinent not only in relation to the global context but
also to that of the anaesthetized (especially culturally and institutionally) Barcelona. Geers began to articulate his work from a feeling of guilt due to his condition as a white man born in South Africa. A witness to countless injustices, Geers quickly chose to apply a direct and uncompromising style. At the antipodes of political correctness, Geers defines himself as a “terrorist”, that is, “he exhibits reality in an impudent manner, without the ideological, moral or religious filters that usually alter it”, as Pierre Olivier Rollin, curator of the exhibition, writes.
These are some of the works on display. A decorative derivation of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE”, transformed into a huge mural in which the letters form filigrees in which the word “CUSSY” can be read; variations (in the form of explicit added penises) on various motifs such as religious, popular or political icons or an installation in which bricks hang from the ceiling, like those used by anti-apartheid activists who suspended bricks from bridges so that they would hit the windows of cars when they passed under the bridge.
Like the Dadaists, Buñuel, Nauman and so many others, Geers doesn’t let us relax. “Sorry, we’re fucked.” Let’s see if we react.
[Article published in Bonart, 2012]
