freeze for you Jårg Geismar

Jårg Geismar (b. 1958 in Burgsvik, Gotland, SE, d. 2019 in Essen, DE) receives his third – and first posthumous – solo exhibition freeze for you at Ruttkowski;68, Düsseldorf.

This exhibition showcases selected works from three decades (1992–2018), which to this day have lost none of their understated humor and irony, their pointed yet playful political drive, or their sometimes morbid undertones. In this sense, this show contains retrospective elements and aims to provide considered insights into the artist’s practice.

“When Jårg Geismar began his artistic journey in the late 1980s, the spectacular, shrill, and loud reigned supreme. Geismar’s approach, by contrast, was quiet, unspectacular, yet all the more insistent. His work attracted attention, not with something spectacular, but with things that were mundane, ordinary, used, found – this was the artist’s primary concern from the very beginning.

Furthermore, Geismar was particularly focused on overcoming borders through communication. He was constantly traveling, including between continents. as early as 1985, years before the internet was widely used, geismar founded A.T.W. (Around the World) – a global platform for exchange that was not just for artists. his staged convivial dinners (Restaurant mes Amis) are now legendary.

Through his actions, which placed great value on communication and therefore on breaking boundaries, but also through his use of collage techniques and sometimes cheap, kitschy Objects, that occasionally even look like trash, in his installations, Geismar was far ahead of his time.”

Text: Noemi Smolik

 

Opening reception
03/11/2023
7–9 pm

• Request available artworks