Jårg GeismarGermany

(*1958, †2019)

Jårg Geismar was born in Burgsvik, Gotland, Sweden. He lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, and Düsseldorf.
He is an extraordinary good-natured, generous artist. His resources of positive energy exceed his needs by far, and so he shares his energy: with his art that fills spaces with lightness while being extremely fragile and glassy, so it seems they could fly away at any moment. And he shares his energy with his fellow human beings and the viewers of his art, all who can get convinced: the good is still existent.

The works from his last solo exhibition Fly me to the moon tell a story on the lightness of things, on great enthusiasm, and human goodness and generosity. Out of glass, foil, colors, and light Geismar creates art which is visually weightless but emotionally dense so that it will stay in mind forever. A neon sign, which can be already spotted from outside the gallery, seeming almost incidentally set up sets the tone: energy and light flow through the room, nothing is faked and forced, but real and skillful. For example, the concrete elements around which everyday materials (newspapers, wires, textiles) are arranged. A teddy bear placed in their midst looks happy, self- confident, and generally satisfied with the situation.

Thanks to his child-like fascination and sincerity, Jårg Geismar is like a hobby astronomer who spends each night outside looking up the sky for hours, attentive, patient, and enthused by the vastness of space. Nevertheless, his art is so much more than incidental. There is a strangely relaxed form of perfectionism inherent to his works, which makes every brushstroke, every material used, every composition look like the work of an artist that wants the very best for his art and the people surrounding him.

In Fly me to the moon, everything culminates in the middle of the exhibition space, in a tent-like room. Underneath dark blue velvet attached to the ceiling by red wires, a bed, desk, chair, and small reading light can be found. When lying in bed, one looks through a glass ceiling, right into the starry sky of Jårg Geismar. The room is full of silence and peace, and the visitor becomes a child again, one that does not know anything about the atrocities of the world yet.