AMSTERDAM.- These two extraordinary exhibitions, running simultaneously at the gallery, include new work by both artists. Geers and Kintera come from very different backgrounds but both artists maintain a practice firmly rooted in social and political awareness.

Kendell Geers
Kendell Geers is internationally acclaimed for his politically engaged work, investigating themes such as colonialism, power structures, activism and his personal background as a white South African. In Voetstoots, his first exhibition in the Netherlands in over two decades, he explores the links between colonialism and modernist languages.

From the artist statement: “The very same values, morals and principles that defined the colonial enterprise and apartheid, also shaped European culture and modernism. Voetstoots takes avant garde languages and repositions them in an age of political examination. The exhibition is named after the Afrikaans word meaning ‘sold without guarantee at the buyer’s risk’. It literally means ‘push by foot’, because the car you are buying might be sold without an engine. What you see is what you get. Instead of art being a weapon of the revolution, I have made the revolution a weapon of art.”

Krištof Kintera
One of the most prominent contemporary artists working in the Czech Republic, Krištof Kintera met critical acclaim with sculptural work characterized by a mix of dark humor and social criticism. With a sharp but playful sense of irony, the artist comments on capitalism and mass consumerism.

The works presented in Naturally Postnatural are deeply rooted in his obsession with the similarities between organic and artificial structures. We are constantly surrounded by a network of copper wiring, spreading out like mycelial cords inside the walls of our homes, the smartphones in our hands and in the ground underneath our feet: technology mimics nature.

Kintera appropriates contemporary materials, most prominently e-waste: household appliances, motherboards, wires, circuits, connectors and screens. The resulting works are a new breed of post-apocalyptic looking plants, radiating a decadent and melancholy beauty. They seem to contain a warning: can technology and nature co-exist?