Outside Event: Matt Keegan

For my first outside assignment, I attended a lecture and showing by New York artist Matt Keegan. The lecture was held in the Fine Arts building on San Francisco State University. He presented his work in a slide show presentation and spoke about his previous and current work.

His work and ideas span throughout the spectrum of creative conception but somehow brings it all back together to form a cohesive collection, which spans across many mediums. Painting, sculpture, photography, instillations pieces, and book arts, are some of the ways in which he expresses his work through.

Keegan spoke about his upbringing in New York and also his time in San Francisco. He did a show that was influenced by San Francisco while he was living here. Compared to his connection with New York and the current exhibit he out together about New York, his San Francisco collection, he considered, more tourist-like. As San Francisco was not a familiar place for him, the outcome of his work about SF came out being more of a travelogue of his adventures here. Some of the photos he showed of the work looked as if they had been taken out of someone’s photo album.

 Although he enjoyed the tourist feel of the San Francisco exhibit, he wanted his New York exhibit to have the feel of New York. Some of the sculptures he showed were painted sheet metal that had been folded and bended into random shapes. But what makes these sculptures unique to New York is that the sculptures were painted in the municipal colors of the bridges that connect the five boroughs of New York. When I first viewed the sculptures I thought the colors of the sculptures were bland and distracted from the rest of the show. But upon learning that the sculptures were the municipal colors of New York bridges, the meaning and cleverness of the pieces were evident and brought the entire show together in a way. I would assume that if I were from New York I would instantly recognize the color of the pieces thus the impact of the pieces would be more easily read.

Another really fascinating project that he embarked upon was a tabletop piece called Flash Cards. Keegan’s mother teaches English as a second language to mostly Spanish speaking individuals. She would cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers and then assign a word to the image. The piece is about the slippery nature of language. One of the images on one of the cards was a picture of Burt Reynolds and I believe the word that was assigned to the image was “Mainly”. These cards are brilliantly funny and I would live to see them in person.

One the biggest things that I took away from his lecture was his education. His education comes through in his work because he didn’t have a concentration throughout his undergrad or grad work. He was allowed to follow a plan that made him well rounded in many different aspects of art mediums.