In his oil-paintings of small and medium format Axel Geis (born 1970) deals with the human figure in a constantly undefined and entirely pictorial space. Because of this, the figure gets a presence difficult to characterize. The paintings are accompanied by a silence tipping between intimacy and strangeness. The people shown in entire or half-figure portraits seem to be in a state of rapture and even if they are looking at the viewer they always remain introspective.
Figurative painting, which makes use of magazine pictures, is in opposition to the concept of using a private, intimate pictorial repertoire. Family slides and fotos serve as models for Geis’ work in many cases. A man in an army-parka is the artist’s father during his military service as a mountain infantryman, a clown in a harlequin cotume is his brother dressed up for carnival in the early 1970’s. Due to their missing pictorial context the people shown surpass the private sphere and reach a more general view of humaninty. In his works, closely related to traditional painting, Axel Geis continues the genre of portraiture and its interelationship of inside and outside.
Geis turns to the individual’s role in contemporary art. The painted figure and its face get caught up in the maelstrom of a imbalanced perception - reason for Baudrillard to talk about the “fraktale Subjekt.” Besides figures, which refer to photographic models, the artist also shows invented figures. These paintings emphazise less the portrait’s role as physionomical and psychological image, but turn to the perception, function and individuality of pictures in a basic, fundamental way.
