Kendell Geers is participating in the current group exhibition titled Believe at Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art – Toronto Ontorio, Canada from September 22 to 6 January, 2019.
This group exhibition opens with Kendell Geers’s neon BE:LIE:VE, 2002, which can be found on Floor 1. With a simple gesture, the three middle letters are made distinct and Geers proposes the irony that belief potentially contains a lie. The exhibition continues across Floors 2 and 3 with more than 20 works by artists from around the world.
BELIEVE includes new textile installations by Toronto-based Nep Sidhu, as well as a playable pinball machine on which he collaborated with another artist featured in the exhibition, Rajni Perera. Other works respond to the physical spaces of the building, such as a wall text by Barbara Kruger and Can Altay’s vinyl window treatments that shape our view of the neighbourhood and city outside. Several artists deal with spirituality and storytelling, including Dineo Seshee Bopape’s acknowledgement of our direct relationship with the earth, Jeneen Frei Njootli’s work with the ephemerality of imprinted bead patterns and Tim Whiten’s explorations of our imagination and consciousness.
In all, 16 artists provide perspectives on how we believe and perceive through a variety of media, materials and disciplines, including sculpture, video, installation, film, collage, printmaking, painting, photography, animation and performance.
About Kendell Geers
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kendell Geers lives and works in Brussels. Informed by his conflicted position as an anti-Apartheid militant of colonial descent, Geers’ often provocative work investigates the social, political and economical ramifications of various power struggles, raising a series of urgent questions around ideology, oppression, elitism and violence. Working across a broad range of media, including performance, installation and photography, Geers’ sometimes confrontational pieces respond to contemporary society’s brutal policing mechanisms, challenging viewers to reflect upon their own involvement in current events. Indebted to Conceptual Art, Geers’ work also targets artistic institutions, often using profanity, irreverence and humor to criticize its hierarchical structures.