MASSIMODECARLO is happy to current November, Lenz Geerk’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in London and his first return to town in six years. November arrives with the sweet-sour scent of a fruit bowl turning: peaches that had been good in September now surrendering to bruise and bloom. Geerk is drawn to that hinge, what lingers after ripeness, what begins as one thing ends. November frames an exhibition guided by feeling – the expertise of uncertainty, and the persistence to maintain going.
Born in 1988 in Basel, Switzerland, and now residing and dealing in Düsseldorf, Geerk paints scenes that really feel like revelations – intimate moments that appear to drift exterior of time. The exhibition gathers three strands – haircuts, nonetheless lifes, and a storefront – right into a single season, a local weather of consideration for small, abnormal acts. Geerk builds atmospheres out of grey-greens, mauves, rusts, and bruised pinks – tones that hover between shadow and afterglow.
Within the haircut collection, intimacy is staged at shut vary: a pair negotiating blades and belief, one seated in vulnerability, the opposite holding the shears. The vertical format elongates the encounter, turning an abnormal trim into one thing ritualistic, even somewhat harmful. Flesh tones are chalky, virtually earthen, as if the physique had been drawn from the bottom.
The nonetheless lifes carry November’s melancholy extra actually. Pears and peaches hunch on folded fabric, their skins overtaken by mildew that Geerk paints with a startling tenderness. This rot just isn’t grotesque however luminous – the blue-green fuzz turns into a sort of halo, dignifying what has handed its season. One canvas exhibits a peach on a plate interrupted by a moth, its shadow falling throughout the bowl like a small reminder of mortality. Somewhat than warnings about vainness, these works really feel nearer to on a regular basis prayers, suggesting that even decay deserves to be portrayed.
If the haircuts flip inward and the nonetheless lifes maintain nonetheless, the storefront faces outward. Store home windows seem flat and frontal, staging hats for show. Its muted tones and restrained signage recommend persistence reasonably than opulence. This façade insists on being seen, even in tough occasions.
Threaded amongst these strands are different figures: a dancer pivoting in opposition to a gray floor, a lady in a white coat gazing at a sculpture. They prolong the exhibition’s ambiance of occurring regardless of dim gentle. Even destruction carries its afterlife – one portray exhibits a damaged vase spilling petals below a area of gold, shards scattered however glowing. One other depicts a lady calmly burning what is perhaps a drawing, a letter, or {a photograph}, as if discarding failure might itself develop into an act of constructing.
Geerk’s work absorbs the noise of the current. They aren’t political in slogan however humane of their consideration to survival – small rituals, minor shows, personal doubts staged with lucid depth. November is a season the place mildew is luminous, vulnerability monumental, and humanity carries on, in opposition to the percentages.
