Rosy Keyser | Medusa Pie Country
28 Feb - 20 Apr 2013
Peter Blum is pleased to announce the inaugural exhibition at 20 West 57th Street with new paintings by Rosy Keyser. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, February 28th from 6-8 pm.
It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.
Frank O’Hara
In this new group of works titled Medusa Pie Country, Rosy Keyser continues to challenge the conventions of painting. She pushes her paintings to do things generally perceived to be beyond the medium’s natural habitat. By exploring themes of grace versus functionality, waywardness, and the notion of self-reliance as a kind of nonconformity, Keyser straddles the realms of traditional painting and painting as instrument: whether a stick chart, a rural neon light, or a visual poem. The paintings on view juxtapose humble elements with big gestures, and make references to natural forces, our instinctual attraction to rhythm, the latent power of poetry, and historical concepts of the sacred versus the profane.
Medusa Pie Country refers to Keyser’s belief that art is always being made not only in dedicated moments, as in the studio, but also in instances often understood as non-artistic. Created simultaneously, the paintings respond to and build upon each other. Keyser uses materials easily acquired in the upstate New York hamlet of Medusa, and combines the fundamental qualities of rusted corrugated steel, beer cans, sawdust, and tarp with oil paint, enamel, and canvas. Keyser’s materials are reused and imprinted by a rough and admittedly imperfect mono-printing process, creating a rhythm among the paintings that leads one to wonder if they actually have a sound; if there is an aural equivalent—a sort of synesthesia—to the pictorial beats expressed. Each of Keyser’s imprints moves away from the original, and each iteration becomes knowable in a new manner. The contrast of where an image begins and eventually ends questions the purpose of painting, but never, though, is there any doubt on Keyser’s part of painting's importance. In Medusa Pie Country, Keyser has created a body of work imbued with a materialist spirituality that in its reordering of pictorial space hopes to affect the viewer not only visually, but in all other sensorial ways.
Rosy Keyser was born 1974 in Baltimore, MD and lives and works in Brooklyn and Medusa, NY. Keyser received her BFA from Cornell University and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been included in the following group shows: Painter Painter at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, curated by Eric Crosby and Bartholomew Ryan (through October 27, 2013); Pink Caviar at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2012); Immaterial at Ballroom Marfa, TX, curated by Fairfax Dorn (2011); Stubborn Materials at Peter Blum Chelsea, New York, NY (2007); Her work is included in permanent collections such as the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, the Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK, and the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
For additional information and photographic material please contact Renée Albada Jelgersma or David Blum at art@peterblumgallery.com (Tel: 212- 244 -6055). Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10am-6pm; Saturday, 11am-6pm.
It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.
Frank O’Hara
In this new group of works titled Medusa Pie Country, Rosy Keyser continues to challenge the conventions of painting. She pushes her paintings to do things generally perceived to be beyond the medium’s natural habitat. By exploring themes of grace versus functionality, waywardness, and the notion of self-reliance as a kind of nonconformity, Keyser straddles the realms of traditional painting and painting as instrument: whether a stick chart, a rural neon light, or a visual poem. The paintings on view juxtapose humble elements with big gestures, and make references to natural forces, our instinctual attraction to rhythm, the latent power of poetry, and historical concepts of the sacred versus the profane.
Medusa Pie Country refers to Keyser’s belief that art is always being made not only in dedicated moments, as in the studio, but also in instances often understood as non-artistic. Created simultaneously, the paintings respond to and build upon each other. Keyser uses materials easily acquired in the upstate New York hamlet of Medusa, and combines the fundamental qualities of rusted corrugated steel, beer cans, sawdust, and tarp with oil paint, enamel, and canvas. Keyser’s materials are reused and imprinted by a rough and admittedly imperfect mono-printing process, creating a rhythm among the paintings that leads one to wonder if they actually have a sound; if there is an aural equivalent—a sort of synesthesia—to the pictorial beats expressed. Each of Keyser’s imprints moves away from the original, and each iteration becomes knowable in a new manner. The contrast of where an image begins and eventually ends questions the purpose of painting, but never, though, is there any doubt on Keyser’s part of painting's importance. In Medusa Pie Country, Keyser has created a body of work imbued with a materialist spirituality that in its reordering of pictorial space hopes to affect the viewer not only visually, but in all other sensorial ways.
Rosy Keyser was born 1974 in Baltimore, MD and lives and works in Brooklyn and Medusa, NY. Keyser received her BFA from Cornell University and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been included in the following group shows: Painter Painter at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, curated by Eric Crosby and Bartholomew Ryan (through October 27, 2013); Pink Caviar at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2012); Immaterial at Ballroom Marfa, TX, curated by Fairfax Dorn (2011); Stubborn Materials at Peter Blum Chelsea, New York, NY (2007); Her work is included in permanent collections such as the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, the Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK, and the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
For additional information and photographic material please contact Renée Albada Jelgersma or David Blum at art@peterblumgallery.com (Tel: 212- 244 -6055). Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10am-6pm; Saturday, 11am-6pm.