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Open Studio

Darra Keeton

Keeton065_144_144A solo exhibition of artist Darra Keeton at Art in General’s 6th floor gallery. While the exhibition file is missing in Art in General’s archives, the artist has provided a photograph taken around the same time and showing the works included in the exhibition. Ronny Cohen’s exhibition review, published in Artforum and available here, gives a detailed explanation of Darra Keeton’s work in Open Studio.

Events
Press
  • ARTFORUM
    November 1992DARRA KEETON
    A R T I N G E N E R A L
    By Ronny CohenDarra Keeton’s paintings give lyrical expression to nature, transforming isolated
    details of landscape into compositions charged with vitality. In the triptych Phrase,
    1991, three 15-inch squares are arranged in a horizontal row, each featuring a
    different, mysterious scene composed of floral and woodsy motifs. These sinewy configurations, enhanced by the gestural treatment of edges and surfaces, create their
    own internal rhythm, one that reflects both thematic and formal concerns. If the black bulbous shape peering out of the left panel projects a primal energy, the dark clusters
    In the center panel, perhaps of seed-combs, seem caught in a kind of whirlwind. The
    Slim stems with their caps of leaves bring to mind either plants or trees, depending on
    the viewer’s perspective. Keeton’s handling of oil is thoroughly engaging: the forms seem to breathe, as if expanding and contracting. In the diptych Start, 191, a solid conic form painted a fiery orange in the left panel is paired with an elegiac scene of vines and
    a pod-studded plant in a marshy setting, a juxtaposition that suggests an elemental transformation.Abstract impulses dominate the overlapping structures that compose Hope, 1991, in which accumulations of fragmentary plant forms appear to be floating in light-filled
    and ethereal spaces. Locus, 1991-2, a wall-size installation piece of 85 mixed-media-
    on-paper works arranged in three horizontal rows of 25 each, reveals Keeton’s ability to translate the dynamism of nature into different genres of pictorial representation. The
    11-by-15-inch sheets, executed in combinations of mostly watercolor, gauche and ink, blur the line between drawing and painting, landscape and still life.On both paper and canvas, Keeton evolves a world of organic representation without resorting to heavy-handed theorizing on art aboutt nture, subsuming "metaphysical statements in the refreshing directness of her imagery and style.