Lisbon Cutout (Pastel Orange)

Keegan’s Lisbon Cutout sculptures (all 2016) are a continuation of a recent series that start out as hand-cut paper forms then fabricated in laser-cut steel, folded on a brake press and powder-coated. The parenthetical titles (such as Traffic Red) come from the RAL colors applied to each work. RAL, an international color system, is used for domestic and industrial purposes. These color-coated shapes often illicit naming, a feature that interests Keegan and overlaps with his ongoing work with visual learning aids used to teach English as a Second Language. The artist’s mother created her own ESL flashcards over a fifteen-year period to teach high school, and adult, education students. Keegan was drawn to this collection because the images were treated as placeholders for language.

Keegan’s work has been widely exhibited internationally in venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, Bard CCS Hessel Museum (all New York), The Kitchen, Sculpture Center, the Guggenheim Museum (NY, Bilbao and Berlin), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria), ICA Boston, the Columbus Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Cambridge, Mass) where his 2016 video Generation, traveled after its 2017 debut at Participant Inc., in NYC. Keegan's first monograph, OR, was co-published by Inventory Press in conjunction with his 2015 solo show, "Portable Document Format" at Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger, Norway. Keegan is the co-founding editor and publisher of North Drive Press (2004-2010) and founding editor of == (2012 and 2016). His work is represented in numerous museum and private collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, The Annette and Peter Nobel Collection, Zurich, The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida.