For several years Kendell Geers has been using police batons as both a symbol and an object within his work. These installations are concerned with power, its relations, and the manner in which it shapes our experiences. Often described as interventions, the relentless physicality of his work acts to shock and disrupt our perception of the status quo – to map the degree to which individual agency is constrained by the existing establishment, and to attempt to explode those borders. This collection of stark objects focusing on notions of violence and the debris of a dysfunctional society come together to form a landscape scarred by the effects of violence and littered with its remnants. But they are also monuments – simultaneously an ambivalent valorisation of the means deployed by power in its own defence, and a eulogy for a world order on the brink of destruction.
For several years Kendell Geers has been using police batons as both a symbol and an object within his work. These installations are concerned with power, its relations, and the manner in which it shapes our experiences. Often described as interventions, the relentless physicality of his work acts to shock and disrupt our perception of the status quo – to map the degree to which individual agency is constrained by the existing establishment, and to attempt to explode those borders. This collection of stark objects focusing on notions of violence and the debris of a dysfunctional society come together to form a landscape scarred by the effects of violence and littered with its remnants. But they are also monuments – simultaneously an ambivalent valorisation of the means deployed by power in its own defence, and a eulogy for a world order on the brink of destruction.
For several years Kendell Geers has been using police batons as both a symbol and an object within his work. These installations are concerned with power, its relations, and the manner in which it shapes our experiences. Often described as interventions, the relentless physicality of his work acts to shock and disrupt our perception of the status quo – to map the degree to which individual agency is constrained by the existing establishment, and to attempt to explode those borders. This collection of stark objects focusing on notions of violence and the debris of a dysfunctional society come together to form a landscape scarred by the effects of violence and littered with its remnants. But they are also monuments – simultaneously an ambivalent valorisation of the means deployed by power in its own defence, and a eulogy for a world order on the brink of destruction.
Weaving together the socio-political, activist, mystical and animistic traditions, Geers creates works of art that are talismanic and totemic in nature. His series of sculptures titled Transformers each take the letters of words – Hope, Fear, Revolution, Riot – as their departure point, and together form a landscape scarred by the effects of violence and littered with its remnants. But they are also monuments – simultaneously an ambivalent valorisation of the means deployed by power in its own defense, and a eulogy for a world order on the brink of destruction.