NO Rhetoric(s) – Versions and Subversions in Contemporary Global Art


  Kendell Geers, Südafrika/Belgien, E, 0 Minuten

Artist presentation and video projection by Kendell Geers

n the framework of the two day event "NO Rethoric(s): Versions and Subversions of Resistance in Contemporary Global Art", at the Universities of Bern and Zurich (www.norhetorics.com), the South-African artist Kendell Geers is invited to engage in a discussion at the Kino Reitschule Bern on the artist's role within society nowadays, through his most recent projects worldwide.

Kendell Geers is an artist of our times who understands better than anyone else the contradictions of an age defined by extremes. Born into a working-class Afrikaans family at the height of Apartheid, he ran away from home at the tender age of 15 to join the ranks of Nelson Mandela’s liberation movement. Five years later he fled South Africa as a refugee, eventually settling in New York, where he worked at an assistant to Richard Prince. Following Mandela’s unconditional release, Geers returned to South Africa in 1990 to rebuild the new democracy, working as a journalist and curator as well as developing his unique Post-Political Conceptual language as an artist. Describing himself as an AniMystikAKtivist, Kendell Geers is the quintessential bridge between the European and African traditions of art, an animist at the same time an alchemist and mystic who believes in the power of art to address the global crisis of climate change. In his hands, the ancient tradition of art flows into the materialisation of spirit with the spiritualisation of matter. In an age of chaos and acceleration, an age marked by political instability, economic uncertainty and cultural confusion, Geers is a beacon of hope, an enlightened consciousness who believes that art changes the world – one perception at a time.

More infos: https://www.norhetorics.com/