Rebecca Keller: Portable Memorials and Abject Objects | October 23 - November 27, 2021
Rebecca Keller, Remember, 2021, Repurposed found artificial flowers, vintage dresser drawer, photographs, foam, paint, 30x18x4 in.
Artist Bio
Rebecca Keller is an artist, writer and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hyde Park Art Center; the International Waldkunst Biennial; the Estonian National Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum; the International Museum of Surgical Science; the Tartu Art Museum; Elmhurst Art Museum and many other locations. Honors include two Fulbrights, an American Association of Museum International Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council.
Rebecca Keller, Forget Not (Detail), 2021, Vintage suitcase, artificial flowers, photographs, wire, foam, paint, 30x22x8 in.
Portable Memorials and Abject Objects/Artist Statement
My work has often focused on the intersection between art, audience, and the wider culture, negotiating the terrain between private meaning-making and public symbolism. This exhibition is derived from my interest in ad-hoc, informal tributes, like congratulatory wreaths and roadside memorials, as well as objects that sit on the border between public declarations and private sentiment---between beauty and kitsch, the comic and the tragic.
Recently our lives seem shaped by a sense of loss—and the near certainty that many more losses—people, places, species, common experiences or values—are to come. These sculptures reflect upon these emotions, and engage nostalgia, aspiration, and empathy. The visual language: flowers, ornate text, wreath and urn forms-are commonly used in commemoration and “momento mori” but the materials are kitschy and degraded. These materials: artificial flowers, scraps of foam, salvaged and thrifted objects, lumpy clay—are potent metaphors. They share, perhaps ironically, a long half-life of environmental and emotional impacts, even as these works participate in a language of temporary commemoration.
Rebecca Keller, Portable Candle Garden 1, 2021, Vintage suitcase, candles, beeswax, repurposed artificial flowers, photos, altered candlesticks, metal, glue, 40x24x12 in.
From the curator, Stephanie Brooks:
Using flowers, wreaths, suitcases and what we think of as transient and disposable, Keller creates complicated objects that suggest acts of self-insertion: what do we carry in a suitcase? What is our baggage? And what do we celebrate or mourn? And how tragic is it that these memorials can be reused?
In these pieces, Keller invites conversation, and uses almost aesthetically embarrassing forms to reveal affect and emotion. She shreds the familiar formats and makes the familiar unfamiliar; the comfortable, uncomfortable. In this exhibition, Keller invites viewers to open up affective, emotional spaces within which we can mourn and celebrate, carry and see one another.
Rebecca Keller, Dr. Seuss Garden, 2021, Wood, plasticine, plastic flowers, paint, varnish, 12x5 in.
Rebecca Keller, Snail, 2020, Foam, plasticine, vintage silver creamer, wax, artificial flowers, 10x4x6 in.
Rebecca Keller, Portable Candle Garden 1 (Detail), 2021, Vintage suitcase, candles, beeswax, repurposed artificial flowers, photos, altered candlesticks, metal, glue, 40x24x12 in.