Goya Contemporary Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work by East Coast painter, Madeleine Keesing, who has been celebrated for her monumental, layered, system-based chromatic abstractions.
Educated in the formalist-modernist tradition, Madeleine Keesing began her practice in the late 60’s- early 70’s, and was clearly aware of both the Feminist and the P&D movements. In the succeeding years her style evolved to include a method of laborious material application whereas she carefully positioned small droplets of paint in repetitive rows. By way of their concern with color (monochromatic, and later, variegated) Keesing’s work has often been paired with the practice of Post-Minimalist vernacular, yet for many years has nodded to the dialect of Fiber Arts as well. Thickly layering two, three or more striations of variously colored paint, the earlier works create a vibrant sensory experience where process and effect comingle, transcending the purely formalist qualities of hue, texture, and line, which give way to a richer, more complex meditative involvement that makes the painting feel alive with breath.
Thomas Krens, former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City, who includes Keesing’s work in his private collection, described the intricacy of her painting technique by saying, “The physical quality of these regularly disposed drops has an overall three-dimensional quality, not unlike a delicate tapestry. Each droplet could be compared to the perfect knot of an ancient rug. Ms. Keesing applies her paint with the dedication and care of both a medieval weaver and a manuscript illuminator.”
While Keesing’s practice avoids open narration of the events of her life, her current paintings reveal the cultural influences of her bundant travel roster. Many of the paintings in this exhibition were inspired by the artist’s trips to Turkey, Japan, Beijing, France, India, Africa, Puerto Rico, and even the West Coast of the USA. Viewing Tibetan textiles, chinoiserie toiles, or Aboriginal artifacts for example, had a profound and stimulating affect, as did the intensity of the blue skies and waters of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The work moves past purely formal impact, to access a tapestry of cultivated patterns. The most notable difference, however, is the artist’s illusion of space. New works depart from her former surface treatment as much as they embraces it, vacillating between the two practices with clarity and purpose.
Born in Woodbury, NJ (1941), Keesing attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1959 to 1963 and later graduated with a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. She obtained her MFA from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in 1974. Her work is in several museum collections including the Guggenheim’s and has been shown in solo exhibitions around the country. A new catalogue is available for this exhibition.
For additional information and photographic material please contact Amy Eva Raehse at [email protected]
