Artists

Ei Arakawa-Nash, Nicolás Guagnini, Jef Geys, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Adam Harrison, Archiv Reinhard Mende

Press release

Galerie Max Mayer is pleased to present Positive Aesthetics, a group exhibition drawn from the gallery's program and inspired by the pedagogical principles of Jef Geys. Between 1963 and 1989, Geys taught at a state secondary school in Balen, where he developed a wide range of significant artworks alongside his teaching. His approach brought together aesthetic inquiry and political thinking, aiming to make seemingly self-evident assumptions visible and open to discussion. 

A key example is the body of work !Vrouwenvragen? (!Women’s Questions?), which compiled questions on women and feminism and was open displayed in the classroom. Whenever a student referred to it, the lesson would pause and the question would be discussed collectively. In this way, the classroom became a space where learning, art, and social reflection intersected.

The spatial arrangement of artworks was also central to Geys’s concept of Positive Aesthetics. As seen in the documentary black-and-white photographs included in the exhibition, he used the back wall of his classroom to present artworks that illustrated artistic movements and aesthetic principles. The exhibition adopts and reinterprets this approach in the gallery space: works are placed in dialogue with one another, forming an open network of relationships. This is exemplified by the juxtaposition of Fruit Bowl, a modernist, participatory work that can be continually rearranged, and the documentary photograph Classroom with Lili Dujourie, which shows the artist Lili Dujourie standing at the blackboard, with Jef Geys seated on a school desk.

At the center of one of the exhibition rooms is the Gevoelsspeeldoos, a key example of Geys’s effort to situate the forms of modernism within an everyday, pedagogical context. For Geys, art was always a distinct category, yet one that remained inseparable from lived political reality. The work combines geometric and tactile elements shaped by the history of modernism, while also functioning as a toy through which children could develop a sense of form and composition. Here, art emerges as an autonomous field that nonetheless remains deeply connected to social life. We are delighted to present the Gevoelsspeeldoos in this exhibition.

The exhibition also brings together other artists from the gallery’s program whose practices engage with pedagogy, play, and social roles. Maximiliane Baumgartner, for instance, closely connects her work to various educational initiatives, particularly the project Der Fahrende Raum in Munich-Freimann. Her paintings are shaped by specific places and social contexts. The work shown here, Das Sprechende Eck, relates to the project Ruhr Ding: Schlaf, presented as part of Urbane Künste Ruhr in Essen-Steele.

Ei Arakawa-Nash have, over several years, most recently in their solo exhibition Non-Gestational Co-Nursing at the gallery, explored new understandings of family and care work. These questions will also be central to their upcoming exhibition Grass Babies, Moon Babies at the Japanese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2026. The work Don’t Give Up (Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, ca. 1889, & The Family, ca. 1886) belongs to a series in which they engage with artists from art history while reflecting on the social conditions that shaped their work. Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist paintings, which often depict domestic life, reveal, also through their spatial constraints, the exclusions faced by women and female artists in the 19th century.

In his work series Decommissioned Games, Adam Harrison presents paintings of board games stripped of language and imagery. These works reflect on the role of games in early socialization, through which children rehearse future roles in playful ways. Reduced to abstract geometric compositions, the Decommissioned Games invite viewers to imagine new forms of interaction and relation.

Nicolás Guagnini’s new pedagogical series of letter sculptures engages with his young son’s process of language acquisition. This work captures the poetic foundations of language, the formation of meaning and, with it, of the world, while reflecting a parent’s attempt to grasp and revisit this almost magical stage of life.

Finally, we are pleased to present, as a first collaboration with the Archiv Reinhard Mende, three photographs from the 1960s. These images, taken in kindergartens and schools, were produced as part of a commission to document aspects of everyday life in East German society. Created around the same time as Geys’s early years in Balen, they offer a valuable glimpse into pedagogical practice under socialism.