KAREN M. GEIGER

INVENTORY

INTRODUCTION

Karen Geiger lives and works in Burlington, Vermont, and has shown at a number of venues and festivals since 2002. Geiger is also an active curator. This dual role, artist and curator, gives her a broad perspective on the practice of contemporary art and its roots in art history. Trained at the University of Vermont in studio art and art history, Geiger works in multiple media: acrylic painting, photography, installation, sculpture, and drawing. She is, essentially, a maker of art.

Geigers subject is decidedly feminist. Her imagery references gender and the body. The work often includes a social critique of the role of women in society as well as reflection and analysis of how womens social position impacts her as a woman. Her work reflects an interest in the portrayal of women and the effect of visual culture on women. She expresses this effect in a deeply personal, confessional-like manner--brutal in its honesty and vulnerability.

In this collection of Collage work, Geiger engages feminist themes and makes images with acrylic paint and papier coll on pages from an old book about Vincent Van Gogh. Geiger executes these images with Rauschenberg-like grace. A pin-up girl sporting horns and a devils tail as well as angel wings and a halo sits on a stool in front of a fiery orange and blue backdrop. A heart drawn in paint connects the woman to a picture of a child. All in a Days Work plays with the multiple and sometimes conflicting role of women: whore, virgin, mother, lover.

As with Geiger's playful imagery, the work itself represents a number of conflicts. Collage, while firmly acknowledged as a fine art practice, is also an activity children are encouraged to do. Altering books is both an act of vandalism and an acknowledged, albeit emerging, art form. These contradictions are not lost on Geiger who uses the tensions created by these relationships to make work that is fiercely complex yet pop-like in their accessibility.