For his first solo exhibition at RX Gallery, German artist Axel Geis offers a focused overview of his work over the past ten years.
his work over the past ten years. In this focus of fifteen monumental works, the eye is struck by the strength and presence of these works
which are fragments of a fragile memory ready to disappear. Melancholy, a key word in this work melancholy, a key word in this work, envelops these enigmatic scenes with their evanescent beauty. The words of Baudelaire's words resonate with the work of Axel Geis: "Melancholy is the illustrious companion of beauty; it is so illustrious that I cannot conceive of any beauty that does not carry its sadness within it. Rather than a serene contemplation, his works invite a serious reverie.

Axel Geis' works describe a timeless world, rooted indistinctly in the past and the present. The almost systematic absence of shadow reinforces this impression. The artist draws inspiration from old paintings, photographs from his personal albums or scenes from
his personal albums or scenes taken from films, he erases any reference to context to leave only the essential the human figure set against a neutral background and captured in a movement, a posture or a theatrical pause. theatrical pause. Only the moment counts, frozen in the glaze of oil paint. A new narrative replaces that of the source image, less talkative, and more enigmatic. "The characters are indeed removed from the original context, but the latter remains pure supposition since it is no longer there. I tend to look at them in this new context, which becomes the new referent", explains the artist.
referent," the artist explains.


Lonely melancholy
We can guess their state of mind and their feelings, which always have to do with melancholy. In fact, a great deal of loneliness emanates from them, a great loneliness emerges from these scenes and in this, he goes further than an artist like Edward Hopper Hopper, where the place or the context participates and reinforces the feeling of solitude. Alex has freed himself from this to concentrate on the motif. Whether it is a little girl, a toreador, a young boy, a young boy, a fencer, a harlequin, a woman next to a piano, each one becomes a unique subject, magnified by the monumental formats (200 x 300 for Frau mit Flügel for example). Axel Geis underlines this melancholy with his evanescent brushstrokes and faces barely sketched out. He paints fragmented bodies (Torso, 2014), as if certain parts had been erased, reflecting an erased, translating into a ghostly presence (Boy, 2019). He depicts their future absence. These scenes are like memories ready to escape us. There is an inescapable, almost dramatic. We are in an in-between situation, which is accentuated by the large, sharp brushstrokes and the effect of non-finito. This idea of the unfinished refers to suspended, stopped time. A way of touching
eternity or to suggest a memento mori.

Simple and elegant colour
Through his pictorial treatment, Axel Geis imposes these figures in a strong face-to-face relationship with the spectator who cannot but appropriate the emotions depicted, so much so that he is caught up in the monumental painting.

Une beauté simple et élégante

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