Interview by Ian P.E.
Cuyahoga Plains | 48” x 72” 2008 | acrylic and spray paint on wood
There’s something kind of futuristic and Sci-Fi within Mark Keffer’s paintings. Like “2001: A Space Odyssey” Sci-Fi…deep and strange. Otherworldly landscapes filled with blips and bleeps – remnants of the digital age. A neon moon-like terrain dotted with organic forms rendered one-dimensionally…of almost-plants and other sponge-like forms popping out from a mostly cracked and vague background layer. And the juxtaposition of these finely detailed levels of the composition somehow adds to a looser overall look to the paintings. Maybe this is through their seemingly errant placement within the composition, but despite the fact that the lines are extremely clean (sometimes masked) – the feeling is still organic.
Surprisingly, Mr. Keffer considers himself a landscape painter. At first look, most viewers (including myself) will not make the connection. The saturated patches of color and contrasted, optic art elements lend his work to be more identifiable with the abstract movements in art history, than the classical schools of landscape painting. But his work does succeed in forming a perspective based three-dimensionality (with layers and levels creating depth) – only not in any traditional sense of perspective. And that’s kind of the point – it’s a statement on the capacity of human knowledge through our limited, subjective experience.
Like most artists concerned with reality and the interpretations of meanings within (David Lynch comes to mind), Mr. Keffer didn’t really want to reveal too much on that end of things. However, the symbols do stand for “things”, but deciphering their actual meanings in any concrete, understandable way, is to overlook how concrete and understandable these “things” actually are.
It’s a real pleasure to cover the work of artists like Mark Keffer – those who have matured artistically over the years and through their complete understanding of art, where’s it’s been and where they’re at within the scope of it all…have struck out on their own, and put a completely new footprint onto the lexicon of art as we know it. The following conversation was recorded at Mark’s studio…again, over in the Mid-town/Asian district.
Some of Mark Keffer’s new works will be on display as part of a two gallery show which opens on Oct. 9 at Front Room Gallery (E. 36th and Superior) and Legation (in the W. 78th St. Studios Building) dealing with “contemporary takes on landscape painting”. You can see more of Mark’s work at myspace.com/mkeffer.
Half-thought w/ Reverb | 28” x 44” 2008 | acrylic on wood
I RECOGNIZE SOME OF THESE FROM A SHOW YOU HAD AT EXIT GALLERY LAST YEAR…
Yeah, the show was called “Heads” – which the forms started naturally taking on these head-like shapes. Then I started thinking about the distant future and them merging with landscapes, which is to say that we’re generally about as important as a landscape.
SOUNDS A BIT NIHILISTIC…
Maybe existentialist…but those are both funny words.
YEAH THEY’RE BIG WORDS THAT EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT IDEA AND PERSONAL DEFINITION OF.
Although, I really connect with a definition of existentialism that I heard which is – “a philosophy of no philosophy”. And that relates to my painting. I’m not so interested in paintings being about something…sometimes it’s done brilliantly, but it also takes art down to a tangible area, and I want my work to really be pushing the fringes of reason and logic. My work is very specifically not logically based, and I think some people really hate that.
I THINK IT’S INGRAINED IN US…THE NEED TO FIGURE OUT THE WORLD AND MAKE SENSE OF IT.
However, there are many aspects that are unknowable and I always connect that with my work. I think of the distant future, where there are things that we are completely unable to perceive. If you think about the most brilliant minds of 500 years ago, there is no way they could perceive, much less understand, something such as satellite communications – information sent through the air from one side of the world to the other. So I dabble in stuff that I can’t get a handle on, as a metaphor of the unknowable.
Landscape/Portrait (unknowable source) | 20” x 16” 2009 | acrylic on wood
WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE UNKNOWABLE, I ALWAYS RELATE THE IDEA OF ETERNITY AS SOMETHING THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FULLY COMPREHEND THROUGH OUR FINITE EXPERIENCE.
Or the limitless expanse of the universe – because it does seem like it is expanding, but that’s from a perspective that there are boundaries. Concrete reality is separate from our understanding of it. We’re bound by our own subjectivity…we can’t really get past it. This may sound silly, but for me, it comes down to what the meaning of the word – “meaning” is. I feel kind of like a landscape painter. When you’re in a landscape, you understand it through your senses. For example, something simple – like taking a walk in the woods at night, in the rain…it can be a really powerful experience. It can be meaningful. A sunset can be meaningful – but not in any literal sense which can be articulated verbally. That’s what I think about. For instance – a giant Jackson Pollock painting may represent the experience of a landscape better than someone making a more literal landscape painting. The experience is what I care about. I don’t care about direct representation or illustrating an idea per se. I think of it as meaningful, but in a different sense – pushing the idea of “what is meaning”.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON THE CURRENT THEME?
My brother has a painting of mine from 2001, when I was in New York, which seems like the start of it. They were organic abstractions that I was taking from medical manuals…representing something in a way that’s completely different than the source. They were basically guts – brains, organs, tissue, capillaries…then I started getting to the idea of the macro and micro of the body – you have this overview that is represented by the macro and then you have some element involved that represents the micro version of it. I started moving away from the source…and that’s how the imagery came about.
IS THERE SIGNIFICANCE IN THE REALLY CLEAN DOTS AND STRIPES WITHIN YOUR WORK?
Part of that is to sort of reconcile the artistic impulses that I have. At a certain point, I was making these things that were finely detailed with a really small brush, and I got to the point where I no longer enjoyed the process. I have these different impulses, some are more hands on – like using an electric sander on the ground. But then I like to be extremely precise at times, so I try to reconcile all the impulses and have the painting naturally exist with those elements. I try to not read anything more specific into that, because it would start to get corny…and I’d rather not go there.
Half-thought w/ Reverb | 36” x 72” 2008 | acrylic and spray paint on wood
YOUR STYLE IS VERY INDIVIDUAL. I LOVE WHEN ARTISTS DEVELOP THEIR OWN UNIQUE STYLE…
Whether I succeed as a painter or fail miserably, I just want to make sure that I’m not painting someone else’s painting. And to some extent, you get yourself in trouble doing that – because a lot of times people like a gallery director or a critic – they have a whole file of work in their heads that they connect to yours. If you are doing your own version of another artist’s work, then it will be understood more easily. And I just can’t do that – I’m stubborn about it! I want to make difficult paintings, and I’m not saying that I’m necessarily original, but at least there’s something of myself in there that I’m adding to the mix. I think that’s all you can do.
Landscape | 28” x 22” 2006 | acrylic on wood
