Lenz Geerk: Schwarzweiß

Roberts Projects is pleased to present Schwarzweiß, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Lenz Geerk, marking the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery. Using the German word for “black-and-white,” the monochromatic works in Schwarzweiß straddle the line between drawing and painting, allowing the artist to probe the emotional and psychological spaces of anxiety, uncertainty and disconnection.

Geerk’s oeuvre is renowned for its use of a figurative language that hearkens back to early Modernism as a means for exploring the strangeness and alienation of contemporary life while also attending to moments of hope and possibility. His paintings regularly depict solitary figures absorbed in contemplation, or groups of people where the possibility of connection has been replaced by the certainty of isolation. His figures are archetypal rather than specific; he sets them within spaces both descriptively vague and poetically alive. The compositional restraint of the scenes Geerk constructs and the placid, dreamlike manner in which he paints is often at odds with the inner turmoil his figures seem to be experiencing. By eschewing obvious references within the works to a specific historical period, Geerk allows them to assume a timeless and universal quality, one that prompts viewers to reflect on details in their own lives without being imaginatively confined by them.

Though the existential and thematic focus in Schwarzweiß is consistent with previous bodies of work, the form of expression is decidedly new, as these works are rendered entirely in black and white. For Geerk, the simplification of his palette into a range of monochromatic values is a way of expressing the increasing polarization of society and the absence of nuance, complexity and uncertainty as a result. His figures continue to express these states and qualities, as do the scenes of landscapes, still-lifes and interiors where figures are conspicuously absent. Even when the emphasis is on the inanimate or non-human, Geerk still places viewers in a precarious situation where, though certainty of meaning may be unattainable, the experiences of levity and joy are not.

Geerk’s investigation of the vast space between seemingly rigid positions takes place not only on a metaphoric level, but on a formal one as well. Although the spectrum of color has been narrowed in these works, they nonetheless contain a wide range of tonal variation and pictorial subtlety which belie any notion that they are truly—and only—black and white. Working in this evasive space where drawing meets painting is just another example of Geerk’s brilliance in using his materials and creative process to express a state of flux and indeterminacy. In Schwarzweiß, works that might have previously been understood as studies or preparations are embraced as both provisional and complete.