Kendell Geers is one of the most radical and influential artists of his generation, known for his ability to expose the fault lines of language, history, and power. His work disrupts established narratives, forcing audiences to confront the contradictions embedded in art, politics, and culture. The Treason of Images is not just an exhibition; it is a manifesto for a world in crisis, where images, words, and ideologies have become weapons in an ongoing battle for meaning.

The title of the exhibition references Magritte’s iconic painting, in which an image of a pipe is undermined by the text Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). The tension between image and text has fascinated artists like Marcel Broodthaers and thinkers like Michel Foucault. Yet, rather than focusing on the image, Geers directs our attention to the title itself. How can an image commit treason? In a world where AI-generated images, deepfakes, and manipulated media shape our reality, this question has never been more urgent.

Geers has built his career on interrogating the structures of power—whether in language, art history, or political ideology. His work collapses distinctions between art and activism, beauty and violence, tradition and subversion. In The Treason of Images, he reveals how the link between signifier and signified has disintegrated: images no longer represent reality, and words no longer mean what they once did. AI now allows anyone with a smartphone to generate a photograph without a camera giving rise to Fake News, Brain Rot, and Deep Fakes, all of which describe the semantic decay of our time.

As an artist who emerged in South Africa under apartheid, Geers understands the high stakes of representation. His practice is shaped by an awareness of history’s brutal erasures and the way language can be twisted to justify oppression. His work does not merely reference art history—it weaponizes it. Using his own carbon footprints as a medium, he literally inscribes his presence onto his canvases, asking what it means to leave a mark in a world where images are increasingly ephemeral and untethered from reality.

Geers’ approach fuses Neolithic art with Post-Painterly Abstraction, creating works that are both primal and conceptual. He moves across the canvas where a single line could signify a border, a scar, or a gilded cage. Layers of art history are embedded within his works, demanding interrogation. As with Magritte’s pipe, meaning is always unstable. The title of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue takes on an ominous resonance when fear is emphasized over color. What happens when these colors are replaced with those of national flags?

His work cannot be neatly categorized as Appropriation Art, Conceptualism, or Minimalism, because it deliberately resists containment. Instead, his art functions virally, exposing the internal contradictions of each system it engages with. Art history, for Geers, is not a static lineage but a battlefield. Without knowledge of art history, he warns, one risks being swallowed by the art market.

One of the most powerful aspects of Geers’ work is his ability to deconstruct language with razor-sharp precision. Simple structural shifts completely alter meaning. With dark humor, loaded slogans like #NotAllMen or #BlackLivesMatter morph into #NoTallMen or #LivesLackMatter, the latter cautioning against cancel culture extremism while still acknowledging the urgency of the original movement.

A work like No Objects (White Out) exemplifies his method. Here, White Out was literally used to erase the word « objects » (which taken out of context becomes both a verb and a noun) from Lawrence Weiner’s 1979 text piece Many Colored Objects Placed Side by Side to Form a Row of Many Colored Objects. The result—Many Coloreds Placed Side by Side to Form a Row of Many Coloreds—transforms the original sentence into a chilling reference to the transatlantic slave trade. On the cover of a major Conceptual and Minimalist art collection, this act of erasure lays bare the historical exclusion of Black artists from these movements.

Kendell Geers is not merely an artist; he is a provocateur, a deconstructionist, and a critical voice in contemporary art. The Treason of Images is a testament to his ability to expose the contradictions of our time, reminding us that art is not a passive reflection but an active force that changes our world - one perception at a time.