Art, meet Wit

Definition of ‘a rarity’: funny artists whose raison d’etre isn’t facile or dull.

Occasionally you have the joy of stumbling across a person that actually interests you. It almost never happens with artists; predictability and pretension all too frequently get in the way of there being a true meeting of minds. This does not apply however to: a white South African disenchanted with the state of the modern world whose ascendance to fame was initiated by pissing in Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’.

Having grown up during apartheid and spending a short span in exile as a result of refusing to serve in the South African Defence Force, his work is driven by an acute political conscience. Violence and global abuse of power are the topical hot springs which fuel his work: examined through every media and ever more innovative means, Geers is direct in his approach and assured in what he wants – confrontation is the aim. This has manifested itself in a number of ways: there was the hole he blew through the wall of a gallery in Glasgow and of course the ‘Hardcore’ exhibition in Paris where footballs were covered in rubber masks of political figures like Bush and Blair and offered to visitors to kick around.

It’s this bleakness of outlook backed by untamed black humour that makes Geers such a gem on the otherwise arid landscape of art which can be tagged as ‘contemporary’ or indeed ‘political’. For instance, when he says “I am living in a time where Contradiction, Truth, Desire, Passion and Anarchist are nothing more than the names of perfumes”, he’s got a fucking point.

–Marcella Coombs

Kendell Geers: A GUEST + A HOST = A GHOST is showing at Stephen Friedman Gallery, Mayfair, until 16^th January. www.stephenfriedman.com