David Geers

Critical Writings on Art and Culture

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Read my short essay on Pieter Schoolwerth's show Supporting Actor at Petzel Gallery here. A shortened version of it was used as the press release for this mesmerizing and timely show.

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You can now read my short text, “Smart Contract: Theses on Humor and New Online Territories.” It is published in a reader for “Sensitivity Training,” a show curated by Olav Westphalen via the Goethe Institute, Sofia, accompanying the 25th edition of the Gabrovo Biennial of Humor and Satire in Art, and covers humor, memes, and the blockchain. Please find the link here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w6cjdneaczmu68m/Smart%20Contract%20PDF%20from%20SensitivityTraining_Reader.pdf?dl=0

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I like to say that trying to be a Renaissance man today only landed me in the Dark Ages. So in that spirit, I present an essay on painting, faith and icons. It's a catalog essay I wrote in late 2019 on THE EUGENE Studio, who are having a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo this year. Fortunately, the essay is being reprinted in the accompanying catalog as well. It's a piece that offered me a deep dive into the monochrome, and there's a chance that if you exhibited monochromes in New York in the last several years you're mentioned in it. Don't worry, it's a benevolent tract and meditates on painting’s pact with technology, love and vulnerability. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bxgvvpw88s37ddi/passion_in_monochrome.pdf?dl=0

Image credits: 

1. WhitePainting_Trinity.jpg THE EUGENE Studio, Series of White Painting “Trinity”, 2017, Canvas. Courtesy of the artist ©Eugene Kangawa

2. WhitePainting_still.jpg THE EUGENE Studio, Series of White Painting, Still from video. Courtesy of the artist ©Eugene Kangawa

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Read my review of Pieter Schoolwerth’s Shifted Sims at Petzel, online now and out in the December-January issue of Frieze. (Image credits: Pieter Schoolwerth, Shifted Sims #14 (Luxury Party Stuff), 2020, oil, acrylic, inkjet on canvas, 2 × 2.8 m. Courtesy: the artist and Petzel Gallery, New York.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/602rv09kn2v3q61/Pieter%20Schoolwerth%E2%80%99s%20Sims%204%20Paintings%20Burst%20Our%20Filter%20Bubbles%20_%20Frieze.pdf?dl=0

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It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed shows, but you can read my review of Kim Tschang-Yeul at Tina Kim in Frieze. It was posted just a few days ago.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hk6d78m2adzjutv/Kim%20Tschang-Yeul%E2%80%99s%20Oozing%20Guts%20and%20Water%20Droplets%20are%20Windows%20onto%20Invisible%20Worlds%20_%20Frieze.pdf?dl=0

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Here’s my recent essay on Pieter Schoolwerth’s “Model as Painting” series included in his beautiful monograph: Pieter Schoolwerth, Model as Painting (New York: Sequence Press, 2019); www.sequencepress.com. I’m excited to finally be able to post this essay. It packs a lot in so as to hopefully add some illuminating perspectives on Pieter’s visually rich and deeply thoughtful work.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/samndw3l94skya3/ModelAsPainting_SequencePress.pdf?dl=0

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In the effort to update my writing site, here’s a short essay I wrote earlier this year for Angela Dufresne’s virtuosic and emotionally probing show “Just My Type” at the Dorsky Museum.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/63csft3g1h1z24l/Dufresne%20Just%20My%20Type.pdf?dl=0

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See my review of Victor Man at Gladstone64 in Frieze. It posits some thoughts on the contemporary and Freud in the context of this artist’s always enigmatic oeuvre. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/arpwlvphqvrto1d/Victor%20Man%20Review.pdf?dl=0

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Check out my experimental, multimedia interview with Florian Meisenberg in the summer issue of BOMB and now finally online. For the full effect, experience this on a computer with an updated browser--maybe put on some headphones as well.

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/florian-meisenberg-by-peter-rostovsky/

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Here’s an essay I wrote on Florian Meisenberg in early 2016 for “Somewhere sideways, down, at an angle, but very close,” a catalog/magazine of sorts published in conjunction with Wentrup Gallery. It features some more musings on Florian’s engaging and varied work as well as some reflections on online formations, productive mistranslation, and notions of the ‘base’. There’s even a postscript.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6jilgpiz32om9wy/The%20Cloud%20Brought%20Down%20to%20Earth.pdf?dl=0

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My somewhat polemical text Luxury and Kitsch had a complex journey to publishing. First written in 2015, a second, significantly shorter version was then presented at the Sense of Emergency symposium at NYU, just after the Trump election. The first version, presented here, was later reworked and published as part of William Powhida’s catalog for After the Contemporary at the Aldrich Museum in 2017. You can read this version here: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2jkqltrm7w1zj63/Luxury%20and%20Kitsch%20Catalog%202%20copy.pdf?dl=0

(ps: The image above is Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888.)

For the shorter, modified version, titled Notes on Luxury Kitsch and delivered at the NYU “Sense of Emergency” symposium, click here: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrglb412iyu89wm/notes%20on%20luxury%20kitsch%20final%20print%20low%20res.pdf?dl=0

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Here’s an unpublished draft of an essay on Money, meant for a thematic magazine issue on the subject that never came to pass. The essay is written by my alter ego, and has a different tone than my other writings. It was also written back in 2014--a different time. But some things are eternal, like people’s ambivalent, hopeful, and punishing relationship to money. This boat was sold apparently.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/71g9u8s46h9lfi7/Money%20revised%202-19-21.pdf?dl=0

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Read my take on the new wave of figurative painting in Frieze, online now and in print in the November-December issue:  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3njzueixm2gwfnj/Acts%20of%20Recognition.pdf?dl=0

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See my latest review: Judith Barry’s “imagination: dead imagine” in the summer issue of Frieze. It’s online version can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzc6jejdjapceme/Judith%20Barry%20_%20Frieze.pdf?dl=0

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See my review of Sascha Braunig’s recent show “Free Peel” at Foxy Production in the May issue of Frieze and also here online:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/33xv61z6bf2fvl3/Sascha%20Braunig%20_%20Frieze.pdf?dl=0

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Read this new piece on the work of James Esber, and on the return of figuration more broadly.

http://bombmagazine.org/article/823797/james-esber

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Although it’s came out a while ago, here is my review of the Whitney’s “Frank Stella: a Retrospective” published in Frieze, March, 2016. If, like me, you are perplexed, bamboozled and often riveted by Stella’s transmutations, check it out.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4onyjc2wpdqhocr/Frank%20Stella%20_%20Frieze.pdf?dl=0