Jef Geys | You don't see what you think you see

 

 

Geys studied advertising and typography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp before taking a teaching post in the small town of Balen in 1963. From early on, he scrupulously itemized each constituent of his evolving practice, including photographs and drawings dating back to his school days. Irregularly updated, the last such ‘List of Works’ (2016), completed two years before his death, comprises 844 entries, around 200 of which are here expertly marshalled into an exhibition spread over two floors. While Geys liked working in series, this orchestration comprises a dizzying variety of paintings, drawings, sculptures, reliefs, posters, architectural models, conceptual photographic and textual works, instructional films and publications. These last included Kempens Informatieblad (1971–2018), a moribund local advertising weekly he took over, renamed and augmented with images and texts relating to his activities, with some issues functioning as catalogues for his shows.

 

Highlights here include ‘Seed Bags’, a series of large-scale painted reproductions of brightly coloured gardening sachets. Beginning in 1963 with Petunia Hybrida, Geys painted one each year until his death in 2018, considering these idealized depictions of attractive blooms emblematic of the perennial deceptions of a consumerist culture. This phalanx of paintings shares a room with the free-standing, life-size sculptures Dress-Up Doll – Man and Dress-Up Doll – Woman (both 1966). The combination of Gey’s background in advertising and the disillusionment of a 1960s counterculture of protest and critique prompted various works that dealt with multiples and readily consumable signs and logos. Chief among these are his editioned, wall-based sculptures ‘Fruit’ (1966–2018) in seven varieties. Fashionable automobile colours of the 1960s, such as ‘Peugeot Yellow’ and ‘Porsche Black’, inspired these works’ monochrome hues.