Kendell Geers
Born May 1968
Lives and works in Johannesburg

For his Carnegie International installation, Geers has chosen to locate his work in front of John White Alexander’s mural, The Crowning of Labor, a nineteenth-century vision of Pittsburgh as a resplendent industrial center at the peak of its cultural and economic power. Within this context, Geers has constructed a scaffold structure in which he has arranged monitors that repeat clips from commercial films, each of which portrays a character in a state of extreme emotion. Geers’s examination of technological media as the dominant means of today’s global communication is further reflected in his emphasis on the physical aspects of technology —the television monitors, VCRs, cables, and exposed wires that characterize his installation.

Kendell Geers, Poetic Justice, 1999 (installation view), scaffold, wires, video equipment, video projection

Kendell Geers, Poetic Justice, 1999 (installation view), scaffold, wires, video equipment, video projection

Kendell Geers, Poetic Justice, 1999 (installation view), scaffold, wires, video equipment, video projection

Kendell Geers responds to questions in the Artists of the Week section in this site.

Kendell Geers’s work has been featured in group exhibitions since 1992 and in numerous international exhibitions, including Bienal de La Habana (1994); Inklusion:Exklusion, Reininghaus and Künstlerhaus, Graz (1996); Trade Routes: History and Geography. 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997); New Works: 98.3, ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas (1998); and Power, Galerie für Zeitgenössiche Kunst, Leipzig, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-1980s, Queens Museum of Art, New York, Traffique, S.M.A.K., Ghent, and High Red Centre, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (1999). Solo shows of Geers’s work have been presented since 1988 and every year since 1993, including exhibitions at Villa Arson, Nice (1995); de Vleeshal, Middelberg (1997); and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Secession, Vienna (1999). Geers received the ArtPace/A Foundation for Contemporary Art’s International Artist-in-Residence award in 1998.

Selected Further Reading
Secession, Vienna, Austria. States of Emergency (1999). Exhibition catalogue, text by Christine Macel.

Hanru, Hou. “Kendell Geers.” Cream. London: Phaidon, 1998.

ArtPace/A Foundation for Contemporary Art, San Antonio, Texas. Kendell Geers (1998). Exhibition brochure, text by Chrissie Iles.

Trade Routes: History and Geography. 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1997). Exhibition catalogue, text by Octavio Zaya.

Enwezor, Okwui. “Altered States: Die Kunst des Kendell Geers.” In Inklusion:Exklusion. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1997.

Selected Links
www.icon.co.za/~kendell/