Alessandro Keegan (b. 1980) is a visual artist, writer, and professor living and working in Walden, NY. He holds an MFA in painting and drawing from The School of the...
Alessandro Keegan (b. 1980) is a visual artist, writer, and
professor living and working in Walden, NY. He holds an MFA in
painting and drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and
an MA in art history from Brooklyn College.
Keegan's
paintings, which he considers abstract, straddle the lines between
science, nature, technology, and mysticism. He explores a 'mystical
science' of metaphysical and fantastical spaces using mysterious forms
such as dew drops, crystals, eyes, shells, and many others that hold
person resonance for Keegan.
His compositions come to him in
complete form, which he quickly captures by sketching, completing many
drawings until the form feels right. Then he turns to colors,
instinctively feeling out combinations and palettes, often combining
natural hues with the synthetic. These color combinations have an almost
synesthetic effect for Keegan, who says that certain pairings have
tastes: magenta and yellow, for instance, taste like marzipan. Once his
initial colors are chosen, he carefully maps out his shapes freehand
with measuring tools and then begins to paint with oils, a medium he
considers outside of history. His process is meticulous and laborious,
hours spent on each shape until it is finished from every angle.
Keegan
has been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, London, Dublin,
Barcelona, and The Hague. Writings about his work have appeared in
Artforum, Elephant Magazine, Masthead Magazine and Ephemera NYC as well
as journals such as Helvete (Punctum Books, Brooklyn) and J’ai Froid
(Castillo/Corrales, Paris). Keegan’s art practice featured in a 2020
documentary called “The Matter of Mind” by Full Moon Films.