Bob Geerts: When It All Hangs In The Air

In his work as a tattoo artist, Bob Geerts has spent years in close contact with the human body. Each one different, each one marked by its own story. For Geerts, the body is more than form; it’s memory, vulnerability, and resilience. The skin, often trusted to him as canvas, becomes a site of silent conversation, a place where old narratives meet new ones, written for their lifetime.
His paintings continue this dialogue. Drawing on years of working with physical bodies, Geerts creates figures that are stretched, distorted, and burdened. Bodies that feel familiar and foreign at once. The exaggerated limbs and skewed proportions reflect the invisible weight people carry: expectations, responsibilities, fears, ambitions. Though every body may follow the same structural rules, Geerts bends those rules to expose what lies beneath the surface.
This new series, titled When It All Hangs In The Air, takes its cue from the phrase “keep all the balls in the air.” A metaphor for the juggling act of modern life, it captures the tension between outer tranquility and inner chaos. We perform stability while quietly battling overwhelm. Geerts’ figures embody that tension, simultaneously fragile and strong, always on the edge of collapse, yet somehow still standing.
For Geerts, even simple objects hold complexity. The chair for instance, universally seen as a symbol of rest, is in his world a site of labor. It’s where he works, where bodies surrender, where stories begin. This duality runs through the entire series: stillness and pressure, freedom and confinement, strength and softness.
The works also carry personal weight. This past summer, Geerts found himself overwhelmed by the very abundance he cherishes: creative ambition, multiple projects, and the looming reality of becoming a father. The joy was real, but so was the pressure. This emotional layering seeps into the paintings, making them not just representations, but confessions.
When It All Hangs In The Air is not about solutions, it is about witnessing. These paintings are skin poems, quiet reflections of what it means to hold everything together while quietly falling apart. They are invitations to see beyond the surface, to recognize ourselves in the shadows of others, and to find beauty in the very act of enduring.