ADRIAN GELLER
Name: Adrian Geller
Age: 24
Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Home: Paris, France
Disciplines: Mostly painting, but also textile, installation, sculpture and poetry
The Houses, 2021, oil on canvas
How do you define your artistic search and practice in three words?
Crafts, cravings and creatureliness.
Which artistic language do you use? What do you want to say with it?
Pictural language, the simplest and most universal one. My works don’t talk - they are silent, but alive. They will only answer questions you already know the answer to. Foremost its use is my connection to my inner self, I cannot control how they will affect other people, it is specific to each person. The best example is folk art that used simple and trivial images to decorate one-of-a-kind daily objects. This way, the preciousness of these objects came from the sentimental values we had for them. I think storytelling is what attaches us to objects and makes them spirited and of value.
How does your work reflect our current times?
Paintings, objects and poems I make breathe every little detail of my feelings, fears and surroundings. It makes sense that the state I’m in when I’m working remains frozen in the physical forms I create. It doesn’t globally reflect the current times, but the effect it has on me. Obviously, this is very egocentric but quite inevitable, as I feel you can only make art for and as yourself.
What do you want to achieve?
I want to understand why some of us fear the dark. What face does death have? Is the devil real, and if so, is he sad? Is melancholia a flower picked just as it bloomed? What do birds do in their free time? And why does human geometry come offas so natural? Also, I guess I am looking for some coherency in chaos.
What is your artistic and personal commitment?
As weird as it may sound, I want to overthrow the rules. This seems to be every artist’s struggle as, mysteriously, people keep coming up with new rules, new dos and don’ts. I’m not talking about overthrowing the moral standards of different cultures or political opinions. I’m talking about making things with your hands: so many people will tell you how to knit, but what if I find a way to knit that is not “correct”? As long as I am true to these pulling forces that I feel and that I transcribe them in all honesty, I can make work that has value in my eyes. I want to be attached to things that are singular and unique. Craving this when everything that surrounds us is the same is not that astonishing. Nothing is worth less than roses and portraits on panels, as long as it comes from a true corner in yourself. Create things the way you want them to be.
Maze II, 2021, oil on wood, courtesy of the artist and Super Dakota, photo by Isabelle Arthuis