Andrea Geyer | When We | IMMA

Hales Gallery is pleased to announce Andrea Geyer's upcoming exhibition When We held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Growing in stature internationally, this is the first time the German-American artist’s work will be shown in Ireland. When We features several recent works by Geyer as well as new work commissioned by IMMA for the exhibition.

 

The inspirational work of Andrea Geyer provokes a radical re-thinking of time. Geyer studies our present by charting histories through a de-familiarizing, transgressive, feminist lens. The resulting works invite a viewer to re-think, re-enact and re-imagine their relationship to past time and how it informs the way they experience the present. As the artist recognises, “Art is not dead… [it] is constantly, through our living, in the making” . In this way, Geyer creates a nuanced space of potential, a vital tool for empowerment and action amidst today’s cultural, social and political systems. 

 

The exhibition at IMMA focuses on Andrea Geyer’s current body of work – an ambitious investigation into the formation of modern art, its institutions and their histories. Featuring performance, text, photography, installation, sculpture and video, the exhibition unfolds as a series of salons, each with its own mood, or as the artist describes, each creating its own particular “universe”. These are spaces made for lingering, to give time for collective thought where critical reflection can otherwise be diluted by the drone of contemporary culture. Combining fictional and documentary strategies, the works within these salons, such as Constellations (2018), Manifest (2017), and Revolt, They Said (2012 – ongoing), honour and celebrate ideas that have been and continue to be marginalized or obscured. Raising questions around identity, community, representation, and visibility within museums, with this work Geyer seeks to champion art as a fundamental necessity and propose alternative possibilities within our contemporary lives.

 

Notably a key influence for Andrea Geyer is the American dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and writer, Yvonne Rainer, whose seminal early dance works will also be shown at IMMA in May. Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, Rachael Thomas states, “...IMMA is honoured to be working with the pioneering and influential artist Yvonne Rainer. Rainer continuously explores the body as a metaphor itself, as a site inspiration, courageously challenging political and social structures. Extending this oeuvre, we are also delighted to be exhibiting new work by Andrea Geyer, who focuses on themes of gender and memory; and how they are constantly reinterpreted against a backdrop of history and current culture. These two artists, Rainer and Geyer, reveal new pathways of understanding feminism, and are rewriting the rules of art practice.”

  

As part of a programme of live events, screenings, talks and lectures that will accompany the exhibition, IMMA has invited the Berlin-based American artist, film-maker and archivist Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor to present Witness, a three-week project running 1 – 22 September 2018. Witness focuses on creating a space for discussions on race and race relations, and features a screening of Taylor’s film Muttererde (2017), and a series of salons and workshops. The project takes place across exhibition and residency spaces at IMMA

 

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Andrea Geyer

When We

IMMA

Royal Hospital

Kilmainham, Dublin 8

D08 FW31, Ireland

 

1 June - 21 October 2018

 

For more information please visit the IMMA website here.