Patricia Geyerhahn

Standstill (2025)
Solo exhibition at Andrew Reed Gallery
September 20th - October 18th, 2025
800 NW 22nd Street, Miami, FL 33127

In Standstill, the subtle plays off the obvious. Patricia Geyerhahn conveys a sense of the precipice, particularly evident in the largest works in her solo exhibition. Loaded objects on the verge of collapse instead find themselves standing in time, seemingly defying gravity to rest in balance. Rather than threatening destruction and movement, the smaller works in the show are more meditative in nature. Whereas the larger works, like Foundations, A Threat, and Time Stand Still, evoke disquiet stillness and foreboding, the intimately-scaled compositions bring curious confusion. These smaller works on panel – framed by the artist herself – explore the desperation and bewilderment in deciphering how one has gotten to the point of collapse.

This new body of work distinguishes itself with its particular methodology of incorporating time. Standstill pauses and compartmentalizes that which overwhelms, allowing the paintings not to threaten the viewer, but rather urgently invite critical thinking and reflection. In this vein, Geyerhahn borrows from Giorgio Morandi’s visual lexicon, where his still life paintings existed in a metaphysical space, time suspended. Geyerhahn’s restrained palette of reds and browns further plays into this pathos, creating an environment reminiscent of red summer skies post-fire and apocalyptic, Boschian-like hells. That said, these paintings, steeped in the surreal, are inherently linked to the real by what they ask: what is going on, how did we get here, and what will the consequences hold? What was the past, what is our present, and what will be our future?

This suspension of the ‘real’ can be seen in Wish or Apocalypse?, where a meteor is stopped in its descent. The title, along with the imagery, asks the viewer to interpret the situation: to decide if it is salvation or doom, if it will come to hit you or pass you by, if it is a climate disaster or divine intervention. A similar lack of certitude is brought by Time Stand Still, a title which simultaneously functions both as a command and a desire for a painting where an hourglass unnaturally balances, on the verge of tipping over and breaking, or miraculously falling over and halting time. The sky, a place where time is seen, remains in a dark purgatory, unrevealing.

In Family Tree and Abundance, the irony between the name and imagery of each piece personifies the pandemonium that could still exist within a framework. Abundance mocks the subject of the painting: it provides a vigorous rain that somehow completely misses the only spot where it is needed, instead beheading one of the ‘characters’ – as Geyerhahn refers to her daffodil-like personifications – it is meant to assist. A family tree is the simple documentation of one’s lineage through generations, but in this painting, the generational inheritance depicted is one of suffocation, entanglement of power, loss, and forgetting. Within the intertwined rootlike bodies, the context of one’s existence is unclear, complex, and indecipherable.

The smaller pieces in this series isolate concepts and present them like poems, symbols interacting with each other to elicit some cryptic meaning. What Time Is It? shows three origami sheep, each meticulously folded out of a paper inscribed with a language mimicking the surreal characters of this world. They approach a new paper starting to be folded. The text is illegible, incapable of being interpreted, thereby alluding to an idea of forgotten knowledge. It also seems as though rather than attempt to decipher this past knowledge, one has decided to play with it. The repetition of the sheep, a symbol of unquestioning compliance, along with the start of a new figure in the folding paper, begs the question: will we continue as we have before, or will we learn? Will we change?

If one perseveres to sit with each piece, he or she will intuit the language of these works and in turn read their signs. The ‘characters’ of this world mirror us and our bodies. Logical Thinking separates the body by isolating the head. Narcissus distracts from its overflowing hoarded resources with its beautiful reflections. I’m here! claims to know itself when it cannot see its own reflection clearly. Choose demands you to consume either fallen humanity or death, while Option #1 and Option #2 serves you another binary: certain separation or ambiguous wisdom. Each of these paintings present a curated still life meant to challenge one’s perception. It is only in Hope, a looser scene, with movement in the water and the only lit candle, that one will find a true sharing of abundance, a light in the darkness. It brings you out of theatrics, out of desperation and bewilderment, and back into the most important question: what will be our future?