BASE-ALPHA GALLERY

GEOFFREY DE BEER — COSMOPOLITE FROM THE COUNTRYSIDE

25.05.2018 – 23.06.2018

Geoffrey de Beer’s work is generally conceptual and political. His quasi-scientific methodology of strictly dispassionate experimentation and reporting is firmly situated within an institutional context and heavily extended into an institutional critique. However, his latest series exhibited at Balzer Projects in Basel and the new series for Base-Alpha Gallery, breaks with previous conceptual and performance-based artistic strategies and treads radically new territory.

The entirely new series of works is inspired by the colorful architecture of small French Alsatian villages, the "golden ratio" of traditional painting composition, the form and color theory of the Bauhaus, poetry and the quest for aesthetic excellence.

On view in Cosmopolite From The Countryside is a series of abstract installations with iridescent glass panels. His installations only use two types of material – glass and oak. The glass panels are placed on oak shelves as bas-reliefs. The configuration of the panels makes it possible to change the composition or the constellation of the piece. All of them have beautifully poetic, funny, ironic, symbolic or literary titles.

In another monumental installation, the material is also reduced to two other types – glass and concrete. These installations refer to studies of Brutalism and specific architecture like the Chapel of Le Corbusier in Ronchamps, France.
Within these works he also expresses his interest in how atmospheric elements such as light is an important factor in the experience of the work.