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							            GALLERIA CONTINUA VIA DEL CASTELLO 11, SAN GIMIGNANO (SI), ITALY
          tel. 390577943134 fax 390577940484 continu@tin.it www.galleriacontinua.com


                                    KENDELL GEERS
                                            “satyr:ikon”
                  Opening Saturday 23 April 2005, via del Castello 11, from 6pm
                             Until 2 July 2005, Tuesday–Saturday, 2–7pm
Kendell Geers first made his mark on the international art scene in the 1990s, following his participation in
important events such as the Johannesburg Biennial (1997) and the Carnegie International at the Carnegie
Museum of Art in Pittsburg (1999). In 2001 he was invited to the Berlin Biennial, which was followed by
other major art events, in the course of which he established himself as one of the most interesting and
provocative artists on the international scene. These include Documenta 11 (2002), the 8th Istanbul Biennial
(2003) and, more recently, his personal exhibitions at the MACRO in Rome and at the Contemporary Arts
Center of Cincinnati (both in 2004). Born in Johannesburg, he grew up and trained as an artist amidst the
political and social tensions of South Africa, immediately displaying a spirit of rebellion towards a
conservative and moralist system that left little space for individual creativity. Art became for him a way of
investigating the world, of stimulating the instinct for freedom through the aesthetics of simulation, irony and
a radical critique of history and artistic institutions.

Geers’s first personal exhibition in Italy, Mondo Kane, was held at the Galleria Continua in 2002, and now
he is back with satyr:ikon, a series of new an works. Like a conversation that has never been interrupted,
satyr:ikon addresses viewers in what is a kind of ideal continuation of his previous show. Once again the
exhibition is organized through specific references to Italian culture. The reference in the title to Fellini, and
likewise to the great Latin literary tradition, to Petronius in partucular, is evident, while the work by the
entrance to the gallery was inspired by a Leonardo da Vinci drawing, in its turn based on Plato’s Timaeus.
Geers engages in a kind of artistic cannibalism, reappropriating classical forms and then representing them to
us in a personal version that has been reworked and charged with physical and psychological tensions.
Resistant to classification in terms of moral categories, in satyr:ikon Geers plays with words, multiplying
them and altering their meanings, constantly throwing up provocations and instilling doubt and uncertainty.
The figure of the satyr referred to in the title perfectly represents this concept: man, animal and divinity
combined in a single being without any possibility of distinction or judgement. All this can also be found in
some of the works in the show, for instance Here Lies Truth (‘John 8-32’) e Fuc King Hell (‘The
Expulsion’).
The exhibition thus has satirical overtones and deliberately leaves to one side the definition of ‘good’ and
‘evil’, suggesting in fact that they may be reversible and interchangeable. The only clear-cut and perhaps
unavoidable distinction is the one between life and death, which is apparent in the contrast between the
works on the first floor of the gallery and those on the lower level.

The works in satyr:ikon enable us to learn a lot about Kendell Geers’s work and his exploration of every kind
of human drive, be they psychological, political or moral. The bourgeois-style sitting room on the first floor
of the gallery has a domestic yet transgressive air, what with the furniture, books, rugs and phallic-shaped
ornaments. Showing on the large screen in the auditorium is an experimental work, S-338, realized by the
artist during a recent workshop in Belgium. It explores the body, which is observed from different
perspectives thanks to the collaboration of alchemists, musicians, performing artists, cabalists and dancers. In
the garden of the gallery there is a tombstone and inscription. Here Geers directly tackles contemporary
history, more specifically the Baader–Meinhof Group, the name now given to the Red Army Faction (RAF),
the terrorist organization formed in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1971. The founders, Andreas Baader
and Ulrike Meinhof, who were both arrested in 1972, committed suicide in prison in rather unclear
circumstances, Meinhof in 1976 and Baader in 1977. After various murders, the group’s activities
culminated in 1977 with the kidnapping and execution of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the
Association of German Industrialists. A performance on the opening day of the show will involve those
present in an unusual Kocktail.




            For photographic material and further information about the exhibition:
                                 Press Office: Silvia Pichini
Tel. 347 4536136 e-mail press@galleriacontinua.com