the truth about cartesian clarity | november 1 - 27, 2003

Juan Geuer at Peak Gallery
Globe and Mail | November 08, 2003
By GARY MICHAEL DAULT

Sculptor, draughtsman, inventor and writer Juan Geuer (pronounced "goy-er") is an utterly fascinating guy and is, quite frankly, one of my heroes.

Geuer was born in Holland in1917 (which makes him now a youthful and vital 86 years old!). He and his family fled Nazi Europe in 1939, journeying to Bolivia where, deep in the jungle, the young Geuer continued the family business of stained glass making and, as the eldest son of eight children, helped to raise his siblings. In 1954 he emigrated to Canada and talked his way into a job at the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa where he remained until 1979, designing both precision instruments for research and designing exhibitions.

In 1973, Geuer founded his Truth Seeker Company as an umbrella under which he could continue his researches and his artmaking. In this small but exquisite exhibition at Peak Gallery, Geuer is showing nine exceedingly handsome graphic works made this year and last, the overall title of which The Truth About Cartesian Clarity. A studied look at the works will suggest to you that the truth about Cartesian clarity is that it's not all that clear.

The first thing you notice, when you look at these whitely radiant, silvery fields of Mylar (they look like white sheets of paper but they aren't), is that Geuer has apparently scored grid-like lines on them, a kind of mapping gesture. Then, if you look more closely, you'll see that the lines are not drawn on the Mylar surfaces but are, rather, scored into the Mylar from behind.! Light flows through them. The tricky part is that to make these transcendentally beautiful lines, Geuer had to score some of the Mylar away, but not all of it. The pressure of the hand becomes crucial. And tact is everything. And if you continue to look closely at these supposed grids, you see that the interstices - where lines cross - have become a terrible muddle of indecision and geometric evasion. Cartesian clarity compromised. Mere chaos loosed exquisitely upon the world.

$2,400 - $6,500. Until Nov. 27, 23 Morrow Ave., Toronto; 416-537-8108.