Josh Keyes
Josh Keyes cleverly merged the natural and the bizarre in his paintings to portray a dystopian world themed around animals and the environment. Depictions of animals are juxtaposed with man-made objects in what appear to be the decaying remnants of human civilization where the humans no longer exist. The almost photo-like realistic images and the unexpected contrast of these scenes invoke an eerie and surreal feeling, as if foretelling the tragic fate of human beings, a fate that might be very real indeed.
Josh Keyes was born in Tacoma, Washington. He received a BFA in 1992 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in 1998 from Yale University. Keyes currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Indiefonica: You use a lot of animal depiction in your work, which one is your favorite?
Josh Keyes: I really like using bears and elk whenever possible, but recently i have been drawn to lions and tigers. In my work I try to select animals that come close to representing or expressing human emotion.
Indiefonica: If you would personify as an animal, which one would you be?
Josh Keyes: The animals I relate to fluctuates between the stag, bear, tiger, and lion. Each one has a different energy level I relate to, I suppose it is akin to the totemic use of animals in Native American and other forms of tribal folklore. An initiation ritual in some Indian tribes involved the young person to go out alone in the wilderness to find their spirit animal. This sometimes took days and weeks. It could be related to a form of personal meditation, focusing inward and discovering a symbol or form that you identify with. In today's culture this is called shopping. Seriously, it was important for me to identify certain energies or emotions in my psyche and give them name and form. With these one can explore through play/art making a larger field of relationships between the self and world.
Indiefonica: In some of your work it seemed that your object crosses two worlds, like flutter or waking, (water and land or land and air) is there significance to it? Maybe global warming?
Josh Keyes: Global warming is a theme I use in my work but the two paintings you mentioned have more to do with an attempt to describe cycles of change. These pieces are probably the closest I come to expressing the threshold between life an death, and the suggestion that all things are made of energy and are in a state of flux. Waking was inspired by an old tree stump that is close to my studio. Though most of the year it appears dead, it will suddenly sprout an umbrella of green leaves every spring. The shape of the stump looks a lot like the head of a deer or elk. I like to imagine that there is a large elk under the earth, that wakes up once a year and could possibly emerge from the soil. there are a number of paintings of mine that fall into this myth building category. They are like day dreams and if I can find a relationship with contemporary concerns or issues like global warming, I do, but first and foremost is to express the poetic quality I feel.
Indiefonica: If any, where do you put the viewer's in relationship to your painting?
Josh Keyes: I place the viewer on the sidelines, these pieces are carefully constructed like a fragment of architecture. They are a lot like specimens or dioramas you might see in a science exhibit. They are meant to be both detached and engaging.
Indiefonica: During working your pieces do you have any special rituals to do? like for example painting in your good luck underwear or tshirt, so special songs....to get you going....jpg)
Josh Keyes: I do but I think they should remain private, otherwise they would not be special. For the most part, the preparation of the panels I work on and studio set up are ritualistic in nature. I do speak to the animals I paint while I'm working, and I tend to do my best work around 3am.
Indiefonica: Tell us how long does it take for your style of painting to evolve into the kind of style you do today? Did you just suddenly have an a-ha moment or what process do you go through?
Josh Keyes: It was a long process, after leaving graduate school i had a bit of a crisis in my work. I am not sure what brought it on but I didn't believe in what I was doing at that time. It was like finding out the world was round in a flat land. Do you take a risk and enter this new adventure and challenge? I basically started from scratch, like the evolutionary process, I started scribbling and experimenting with marks and paint. Like a child, throwing out most everything I had learned in school and re-learned making things. I imagined myself as an astronaut from another world or time visiting earth and taking a visual inventory on our current political and ecological situation. I wanted it to be an objecting view that contained and expressed and emotional charge. I felt that the diagrammatic, or sterile cross-section format would be a perfect fit for this viewpoint. It has a detached and logical feel to it and created an interesting juxtaposition when incorporated with surreal or absurd imagery.
Indiefonica: If you can own any of paintings or art pieces what will it be, anything at all?
Josh Keyes: What a question, over the years there have been so many paintings/sculptures I have fallen in love with and am inspired by. To be honest, I would like to own the entire Chicago Art Museum. That was my favorite place to hang out while I was a student there. So many great paintings, sculptures, and loved the suit of armor collection.
Indiefonica: If you were Vlad the Impaler, who would you like to impale and why?
Josh Keyes: I would impale the dog owner who keeps letting their dog poop in our yard.
More Info: http://www.joshkeyes.net/
Last Updated on Thursday, 29 September 2011 17:24