D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with artist Matt Keegan entitled Any Day Now. In the upcoming exhibition, Keegan will create an installation involving works from various mediums including: large scale text-based works inserted into the gallery walls, photo-collages resembling sculpture, photograms, and a series of prints (letterpress, Xerox, silkscreen).
The work of Matt Keegan questions the relationship of images and words to the experiential. Images that originate from personal snapshots that are often void of the figure’s identity and performative words like the pronouns You, Me, I, and We both mine such semantic notions as reference, meaning and content. The viewer activates the work and becomes the point of reference that gives variable interpretations that can be personal, professional, or political. The phrase “Any Day Now” repeated throughout various works in the exhibition acts as a sort of mantra announcing that the work is a continuous source connected to the real time and space outside of the artwork itself. In that respect, Keegan extends the notion of conceptual art as famously defined by Lawrence Weiner's Declaration of Intent, and embraces the idea of art and life being one and the same.
Keegan’s work has been widely exhibited at venues such as at White Columns, New York; Wallspace Gallery, New York in collaboration with Leslie Hewitt; Sculpture Center, New York; and Mandrake, Los Angeles. He also organizes exhibitions with his curatorial collaborative Public-Holiday Projects and is co-publisher of the annual publication North Drive Press.
Front Room Jedediah Caesar: Three Views from Space
D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with Los Angeles based artist Jedediah Caesar. The exhibition will consist of several resin-based sculptures, which have been amalgamated with debris from Caesar’s living and working environment. The three main works in the show are: a wall piece that is made up of 24 panels, a large bouquet of dried plants that emerge out of a cube filled with organic refuse, and a fabric recliner set on a shipping pallet. Each piece, with its uncertain status, exhibits a different point along the timeline of artistic production.
The large wall piece that evokes an abstract painting (or approaches abstraction) is made up of panels that have been sliced from a solid cube filled with collected objects. The individual panels function in a similar way to film stills — when viewed in a sequence, the spliced items that have been embedded in resin before the cuts were made, are reconstructed in the viewer's mind. The plants that jut out of a resin cube that gradually becomes concrete closer to the base contains domestic organic refuse such as seeds, wood chips, and dried flowers. The rough panels that were cut from the piece to form the cube are presented along with it creating a possibility to reverse the separation. The recliner that is rendered shapeless by the heap of objects still in their original found state appears to occupy the very initial stage in Caesar’s process. The various art process castoffs that are present in the sculptures, as well as works that appear to be at various points of completion, challenge the notion of labor value behind artistic production and question the idea of purity of form. In 2007, Caesar had a solo show at the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas. In 2005, his work was included in “Thing: New Sculpture from Los Angeles” at the Hammer Museum and Cultural Center, Los Angeles and in 2006, he was part of the show “Trace” at the Whitney Museum at Altria. Caesar is also included in The Altoids Collection of emerging artists.
