DETOUR 2021

David Geiser - Memorial Exhibition

Click each image for a clickable link to shop each image

A Tribute:

David Geiser, a wonderful artist and friend, died suddenly last year at the age of 73. It was such a shock to all of us who knew him: he was so very alive and so vital. A phone call with David would just about always start with, “What’s shakin daddy-o?” David had been part of the underground comic scene in San Francisco in the 70s. He gave me one of these crazy comic books he had done back then.  It is filled from cover to cover with drawing of impeccable skill and evidence of an imagination so wild it is like Goya on LSD. He moved to Paris in the 70s for a couple of years and even did cartoons for the legendary Charlie Hebdo weekly magazine. In 1980 David moved to Soho in New York City and lived there for 20 years before settling in the Springs section of East Hampton with his wife, the actress Mercedes Ruelhl and her son Jake. He loved the fact that he was making paintings down the road from Jackson Pollack’s studio and could go get coffee at the same general store where Pollack traded paintings for beer. He felt privileged to be able to go to the same beaches that Willem DeKooning rode his bike to, and his walks in these places at dawn were an everyday ritual for him. He knew the history and appreciated the feeling of being connected to it.  

When you talked with David you were just as likely to hear a great story about the painter, Francis Bacon, who David regretted not having had a drink with when he had a chance, as something about the philosophers Democritus or Diogenes, and which one it was that was searching the desert for an honest man. His mind was filled with information from art history and materials for making paintings both traditional and not, to mycology and the history of the use of hallucinogenics. David loved the alchemy in the process of art making. When you went to his studio he almost always had some mixture of paint, dried pigments, resins, and varnishes along with gold leaf he had poured together on top of a wood panel, letting it all flow, mix, and dry outside on the ground. This love of materials even extended to the apothecaries in Chinatown where he would go to get the Reishi mushrooms that are used in several of the pieces included in this show. The Reishi mushroom is used in traditional Chinese medicine to boost the immune system, lower blood pressure, and is even believed to aid against cancer. I’m sure it was part of David’s intent to suggest a magical healing quality in his art. In the last few years he had combined the chance alchemy and abstraction with the cartooning and caricatures he had been doing most of his life. It was a marriage between these two avenues of art making he had been involved with for decades. I remember him being quite excited about the development. Several of these are in this tribute exhibition. It is my hope that David’s work which was certainly seen and appreciated in his lifetime is looked at even more closely now and gets the further recognition it deserves. David is greatly missed by so many of us. His absence is a hole in our art world. 

The esteemed art historian, curator, and museum director, Peter Selz said of David’s work, “David Geiser’s work is about transforming matter into spirit. His stunning pieces ascend from the basic life force of nature.” 

Much thanks to Jake Ruehl who invited me and Glen Hansen into David’s archives to choose the work for this exhibition. 

~ Adam Straus, Riverhead, May 2021 

Biography

Born in upstate New York and educated in New England, David took additional courses at The Art Students League, San Francisco Art Institute, Ecole des Beaux Arts. He lived in San Francisco and wrote and drew Underground Comix. David has had 10 books of his work published, and founded a small publishing house...Yahoo Productions. David lived, worked and studied in Paris and had work published in many French and European magazines including the ill-fated Charlie Hebdo. He worked and painted and showed Internationally in NYC and established the SoHo Studio Center which provided studios for international students. He moved to The Springs East Hampton with the actress Mercedes Ruehl and their son Jake. David had a studio right down street from Jackson Pollock's digs, rode his bike on Willem DeKooning's path to the sea...and jumped in!