Kendell Geers' The Prodigal Son
by Rory Bester
The Prodigal Son is back. Yes, Kendell Geers, his heart still in his mouth and his tongue firmly against his cheek, has made a long overdue return to the Goodman Gallery for an engaging and energised exhibition that not only showcases his ability to move with consummate ease between media, but also underlines the extent to which his global discourse is still at heart a thoroughly local politics.
Before entering the main exhibition space, over to the right, is a photograph of an explosion ripping apart one of the towers of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Written over the image, in a typeface less graceful than Magritte's original, is Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Mediated reality is not what it seems. And this is exactly what this powerful body of work overwhelmingly deliberates on.
The three single channel videos, produced with Patrick Codenys under the collaborative name Red Sniper, present Geers at his perceptive best. Whether reversing the implosion of the World Trade Centre in slow motion, condensing Apocalypse Now to a matter of seconds, or splicing together disparate Hollywood moments of violence given and received, Geers uses the disruption of time (and its collusion with narrative) to renegotiate our expectations of horror.
In T.W. (Shoot), this horror is an assemblage of photographed stills from Hollywood movies, each featuring an actor or actress aiming and shooting an array of handheld weapons. The Warhol-esque repetition of both the exact moment of explosive release, and the same tense, acted-up expression point to a numbness that is so becoming of violent dis-ease.
Geers has always surveyed South Africa's landscape with a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a matchstick in the other. The Terrorist's Master (Bastard) and The Terrorist's Apprentice - the former a matchstick in a glass vitrine and the latter a digital print of a single matchstick - combine object, evidence and curiosity to brazen out (sic) our presumptions about what drives violence, and what is derived from it.
The 'terrorist' works are a good example of Geers' unfailing wordplay. And he uses it to good effect in the body of works, most notably Veritasatire and B/ORDER. In traditional stiff white stencil on black background, and fluid bright orange neon, Geers disrupts the reading of words as a means of disorientating our sense of appearances. How comfortable is a satire on truth? How comforting is the order that borders create?
Well not so comforting, if Suburbia is anything to go by. This series of small photographs eloquently satirise the relationship between suburban wall, security company signage and garden foliage. The combination of overdressed and underdressed walls, and foliage that is variously menacing, manicured, and unkempt, awkwardly mediate the signs posturing of different degrees of protection.
I am thankful that reality TV is on the way out - at least for advertisers who are moving their money back to drama and comedy - and we won't have to give our patronising trust to reality. But I'm more thankful to Kendell Geers' mastery at using what seems like simple dichotomies to probe the easy banalities of everyday life and then, in a subtle turn, offer us everything that reality is not.
Opens: Saturday May 10 (NB: the gallery will have extended hours from 9.30am to 5pm)
Closes: May 31
Goodman Gallery, 163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Tel: 011 788 1113
Fax: 011 788 9887
Email: goodman@iafrica.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 9.30 a.m - 5 p.m, Sat 9.30 a.m - 4 p.m
