Jårg Geismar

Ruttkowski;68 presents If You Don't Come In, Smile As You Go By, Nr. 2, the gallery's fourth solo exhibition of works by Jårg Geismar (b. 1958 in Burgsvik, SE, † 2019 in Essen, DE), in Paris.

Jårg Geismar had something of a magician about him. He found the materials for his artworks on the street, in old factory buildings, even in the rubbish. These were ordinary by-products of everyday life: wooden boards, cellophane sheets, scraps of paper, broken panes of glass, cables, or, in this case, the cellophane wrappers from cigarette packets. He painted them with luminous glass paint and pinned them to the wall. In doing so, he transformed these discarded transparent objects into delicate, light-reflecting artworks which became, through their luminosity, objects of desire.

And then there are his drawings. Fascinated by the images produced by electronic devices – images made of light, immaterial and constantly changing – Geismar sought to create something similar using traditional means: images that are visible yet immaterial, and always in a state of change. He drew on light-transmitting surfaces such as glass or cellophane film. He then mounted these drawings slightly away from the wall, allowing them to cast shadows and thereby extend the drawing process. They are traces of fleeting moments that continually slip out of reach, only occasionally revealing something like beauty. For Geismar, the presence of beauty emerging from the midst of the often grimy, mundane world was particularly important.

Jårg Geismar was quiet and unassuming, his voice calm and soft. Yet he was an astute observer. He had the ability to snatch a moment or an object from the flow of time and transform it into a work of art. His aim was to break through the numbness produced by mass media and reawaken our dormant capacity for attention.

—Noemi Smolik