Lenz Geerk
On the occasion of the Kunsthaus Zürich extension, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, Lenz Geerk’s recently acquired painting is currently on view as part of the Highlights of the Permanent Collection through the end of 2022. Sculptor with Model and Sculpture II (2020) is part of an ongoing series, based on Picasso’s The Vollard Suite (c. 1930s), in which Geerk investigates the relationship between three subjects. While Picasso eroticizes the relationship between the artist, model, and art in the series, casting himself in the role of the sculptor pictured throughout, Geerk deftly reverses the artist/muse dynamic. In doing this, the female artist is in control of the painting, and of both the male subject’s gaze and our own. For Geerk’s painting to hang in the institution that mounted Picasso’s 1932 inaugural exhibition further challenges this relationship.