Press Release

Born in 1988 in Basel, Switzerland, and now living and working in Düsseldorf, Geerk paints scenes that feel like revelations - intimate moments that seem to float outside of time. The exhibition gathers three strands - haircuts, still lifes, and a storefront - into a single season, a climate of attention for small, ordinary acts. Geerk builds atmospheres out of grey-greens, mauves, rusts, and bruised pinks - tones that hover between shadow and afterglow.

November arrives with the sweet-sour smell of a fruit bowl turning: peaches that were perfect in September now surrendering to bruise and bloom. Geerk is drawn to that hinge, what lingers after ripeness, what begins as something ends. November frames an exhibition guided by feeling – the experience of uncertainty, and the persistence to keep going.

In the haircut series, intimacy is staged at close range: a pair negotiating blades and trust, one seated in vulnerability, the other holding the shears. The vertical format elongates the encounter, turning an ordinary trim into something ritualistic, even a little dangerous. Flesh tones are chalky, almost earthen, as if the body were drawn from the ground.

The still lifes carry November’s melancholy more literally. Pears and peaches slump on folded cloth, their skins overtaken by mold that Geerk paints with a startling tenderness. This rot is not grotesque but luminous - the blue-green fuzz becomes a kind of halo, dignifying what has passed its season. One canvas shows a peach on a plate interrupted by a moth, its shadow falling across the bowl like a small reminder of mortality. Rather than warnings about vanity, these works feel closer to everyday prayers, suggesting that even decay deserves to be portrayed.

If the haircuts turn inward and the still lifes hold still, the storefront faces outward. Shop windows appear flat and frontal, staging hats for display. Its muted tones and restrained signage suggest persistence rather than opulence. This façade insists on being seen, even in difficult times.

Threaded among these strands are other figures: a dancer pivoting against a grey ground, a woman in a white coat gazing at a sculpture. They extend the exhibition’s atmosphere of going on despite dim light. Even destruction carries its afterlife - one painting shows a broken vase spilling petals under a field of gold, shards scattered but glowing. Another depicts a woman calmly burning what might be a drawing, a letter, or a photograph, as if discarding failure could itself become an act of making.

Geerk’s work absorbs the noise of the present. They are not political in slogan but humane in their attention to survival - small rituals, minor displays, private doubts staged with lucid intensity. November is a season where mold is luminous, vulnerability monumental, and humanity carries on, against the odds.

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About the Artist

Lenz Geerk was born in 1988 in Basel, Switzerland. He lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

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Also Exhibiting at MASSIMODECARLO

About the Gallery

MASSIMODECARLO’s new gallery space is located in 16 Clifford Street, at the hearth of London’s Mayfair district. On the first floor of a Grade II Listed building built in 1723, the gallery’s new exhibition space retains largely intact, original interior features. Designed by London-based PiM.Studio Architects, this new space aspires to offer an alternative exhibition model for the contemporary art system. The gallery is present on the London scene since 2009.

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Address
16 Clifford Street
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 6pm
(1)
London 16 Clifford Street
MASSIMODECARLO
16 Clifford Street, London, United Kingdom
+44 (0)20 7287 2005

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 6pm
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