Underdonk

press release

February 18 – March 27
Opening reception February 25 from 6-8 pm

Open Saturdays + Sundays, 1-6

Underdonk is thrilled to announce Haunt The Margins, a solo exhibition of paintings by New Haven-based artist Zachary Keeting. The show will bring together a collection of paintings that continue Keeting’s fusion of hard-edged abstraction, and color field painting, with an expressionistic, material-driven approach to image-making. While a major fixture in the New York City art world as one half of Gorky’s Granddaughter, Keeting’s long-standing video interview project with Christopher Joy, this will be his first solo exhibition in New York City.

Zachary Keeting:

Painting in the pandemic: boil ‘em down. Concentration (in color + movement + matter). Make ‘em dark. Make ‘em feverish.

When the sharp edges returned in September, the immediate question was: what are these things? Are they symbols of the old-me? Might they sit up front (fresh) or must they be buried in the mix (ruined)? Is the new-me (mingled-me) beating up the old-me (graphic-me)? Or are these pictures of places? Crumbling coastlines? A path under surges.

Are the perspectival lines human-built (seawalls / ramparts / foundations)? They seem clearly vulnerable to destruction: engulfed in mayhem, over-ridden by storming forces. The vocabulary is elemental: gaseous / liquid / solid (+ the mysterious radioactive / electric). Invisible energies have visible effects: inexplicable color shifts.

Before the edges returned, nothing in the paintings was breakable. I’d banished edges for 16 years, determined to make the work more naturalistic (less fascistic). They’d arrived. The juice runs.

Photos of calamity (from far off / quiet) linger on my phone. Old-school Sublime. Volcanoes creating their own weather systems (black-out soot / lightning). Mediterranean islands glowing red atop blue-green waves. Humble, heartbreaking flue fires.

Make ‘em more extreme in terms of viscosity: simultaneously thinner + thicker. Also explore more fully the in-between: the whipped, airy, nougat-like mid-zone. How do puddles of this in-between viscous state settle in, or get pushed around, by the harder / softer forces? Is there radical softness? Soft as a flood.

I don’t like the term disaster porn.

Faster, larger brushwork sometimes. Smaller, slower accretion elsewhere. Think of Chris Joy, use smaller brushes, add precariousness. Heavy-handed scraping (+ the weight of my back) amplifies the violence.

Listening to Alistair Galbraith a lot these days. Mussels in Lamplight / Heights of Les Falizes / A World So Thin. Flow in painting. Flow in music. Layered energies. Only sad beauty was beauty.

Born in Germany (1973), Zachary Keeting lives and works in Connecticut. He received his BFA from Alfred University in 1995, and his MFA from Boston University in 1998. He has shown his paintings nationally and internationally, and has participated in numerous residency programs including Yaddo, The Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Santa Fe Art Institute. He co-founded Gorky’s Granddaughter (an interview project) in 2010 with Christopher Joy. He frequently records music; and for the past 15 years, has taught painting at The Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven.

http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/

https://zacharykeeting.bandcamp.com/

pictured: “haunt the margins”, acrylic on canvas and it’s 26” x 20”