Bas Geerts
Available works
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Bas Geerts (born 1971 in Leiden, The Netherlands) creates paintings, murals, screen prints and objects. He graduated as a musicologist from the University of Amsterdam in 1995, with a specialization in contemporary composed music.

In addition to being a visual artist, Geerts is a programmer at arts festival ‘Musica Sacra’ in Maastricht, and in 2014 provided the selection, sequencing and design of the photobook ‘Moonshine’ by Bertien van Manen. He also works as a writer and translator and in that capacity published in 2022 the book ‘Why are the poets silent’ with texts by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

The work of Bas Geerts is characterized by an openness of form, a kind of agility that manifests itself on several levels simultaneously. In the first place, there is the play of colors. Bright hues enter into a synthesis and optically blend into new shades. Each color seems to be in motion and seems to want to assimilate with its complement – no doubt also the result of the use of pure pigments in the paint, which is selfmade by Geerts. Secondly, the painting itself seems to change according to the position the viewer takes towards the work: is he looking at the canvas from an angle or straightforward, is he standing near or far? The reflection of the sheet metal will always change, while the lines of the composition, still clearly discernible up close, merge into a whole from a distance. In addition, the openness of form is reflected in the way the composition of the paintings is created.

In fact, each design is generated by a computer program written by Geerts himself. Since several parameters in the algorithm are determined “at random,” the program constantly displays new images. In this way, Geerts is the creator of a work of art which he does not make himself, but rather: he performs what he had not anticipated in a concrete sense. In this work process, the difference between intentionality and chance blurs: the artist takes responsibility for the unexpected as much as for the preconceived, while the viewer himself can directly influence what he sees. It is therefore Geerts’ view that he has no control over the final result; the idea of control is an illusion.