Lenz Geerk

Robert Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent paintings by German artist Lenz Geerk. His new series is an insightful examination into the undercurrent of the threat, uncertainty, and fear of the current day. Unlike The Table Portraits, Geerk's first solo show with the gallery, there is no formal link between the individual works of this show. What ultimately connects the works on view is an underlying feeling of domestic suspense, fueled by an unsettling lack of faith.

Approaching the exhibition room as a mutable space that is highly charged with the potential, Geerk's staging suggests a setting in which these motifs in the work are mirrored within the emotions experienced from the show. The lighting is deliberate and forceful. Black - the void - predominates the painting frame. Here, the shadow is as important as the light, for not more. Light is used to bring into focus the smallest of objects, gestures, emotions. With the addition of abstract shadows, the effect is far more powerful and the sense of unease that much stronger.

Perhaps one of the most key visual techniques Geerk employs, in addition to lighting, is his use and manipulation of perception through perspective. We simultaneously look both at and down at his subjects, so far as we see all of them, bare. This intensified sensibility is both seductive and disturbing. The subjects in the paintings look past each other, looking expectant, their relationships endlessly complicated.

Lenz Geerk was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1988 and grew up with a fondness for classic modern art and comic books. He studied painting at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2008-2013). Recent solo exhibitions include Galeria Acappella, Naples; Galerie Valentin, Paris; Galeria Mascota, Mexico City; Gerhard Hofland Gallery, Amsterdam; The Cabin, Los Angeles, among others. Geerk resides and lives in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Mixed Blessings is the artist's second solo show with the gallery.