Opening Saturday October 17th, between 2pm and 7pm.
Gallery Hioco Delany is pleased to present Me Time, a solo exhibition of new works by Bob Geerts opening on October 17.
Throughout the exhibition, solitary figures inhabit landscapes and interiors. They read by the water, rest in bed, sit at a table, or dance in a room, absorbed in moments that seem to belong entirely to them. The works emerge from Geerts’s growing desire for space and solitude. Since becoming a father, time alone has become something he must consciously make room for. His paintings give pictorial form to this longing, imagining an existence temporarily free from interruption, obligation, or the expectation of achievement.
Drawing on places experienced and imagined, Geerts constructs intimate microclimates. His figures occupy much of the picture plane. Their substantial, rounded bodies recall Fernand Léger visual language, lending everyday gestures a monumental presence. Proportions are freely adjusted: the curve of a limb echoes a leaf, while the arc of a shoulder finds its rhythm in the surrounding forms. Flattened perspectives and overlapping planes draw bodies, plants, and objects into close proximity. The space appears to gather around the figures, sheltering their absorption.
Across these works, warm ochres, oranges, and muted purples give way to cooler greens, turquoise, and pale blues. Colours recur in both bodies and surroundings, binding them into a shared pictorial world. This coherence gives solitude a sense of belonging: the figures appear at home in the spaces they occupy.
The feeling of harmony the paintings elude takes on a pastoral character, evoking an imagined life at ease with nature. Where the figures appear nude, their unselfconscious presence gives that freedom a bodily dimension, suggesting a temporary release from the roles of everyday life. The interiors offer a domestic expression of the same desire. A bed, a room, or a place at a table becomes a setting in which to remain absorbed in one’s own experience.
The paintings offer a romanticisation of time itself. Their title places this ideal within the contemporary language of self-care, giving a familiar name to an elemental need. A quiet irony follows: even time free from demands must be planned. Against this pressure, Geerts imagines moments whose value lies in the experience itself. Reading, resting, or looking at a flower requires no further justification. The paintings allow these moments to endure.
Text by Isabel Van Bos
