Jayson Keeling

Jayson Keeling (1966-2022)^[1] was an artist who worked in photography, video, sculpture, and installation.^[2][3] Keeling's work challenges conventional norms surrounding sex, gender, race, and religion.^[2] Keeling often reconfigured popular iconography, to explore notions of masculinity, and cultural ritual.^[4]

Early life and education

Jayson Keeling was born in 1966 in Brooklyn, NY to Jamaican parents.^[5][3] Keeling's grew up between Jamaica and the Bronx, New York.^[6] His bi-cultural upbringing would later influence his work.^[6] Keeling graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1986 with an AA in Fashion Illustration and Art History.^[4] Keeling started off by working as a photographer and film director in fashion, music, film, and the pornography industry.^[2]

Art

Jayson Keeling mines popular culture, and mythology to create artworks that question and deconstruct accepted politics of sex, gender, race, and religion.^[4][3] Keeling works in photography, video, sculpture, and installation.^[2][3]

His work often pulls from different visual cultures and then "jams them all into the same frame."^[5] Keeling often works in the realms in-between cultures, creating work that is "neither here nor there."^[5] He often uses performative gestures to explore ritual and masculinity.^[3]

Jayson Keeling's photographs have been described as violent, sexy, glam and grotesque.^[5]

A work by Keeling, a diptych of photographs of legendary dancer and choreographer, Willi Ninja, exhibited at the 2008 "The B Sides" show at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art was described by art critic Benjamin Genocchio as "one of the show's most arresting exhibits" in The New York Times.^[7]

Selected exhibitions

2014

• Aljira at 30: Dream and Reality, New Jersey State Museum^[8][9]
• The First Sweet Music at John and June Allcott Gallery
• TEN at Cindy Rucker Gallery^[10]

2013

• Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand Curated by Jayson Keeling at the Lower East Side Printshop.
• Another New York at Barclays Center
• Psychosexual at Andrew Rafacz Gallery^[10]

2012

• Bigger Than Shadows at DODGE Gallery
• tête-à-tête at Yancey Richardson Gallery
• tête-à-tête at Rhona Hoffman Gallery^[10]

2011

• Nov 2011 - Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds at LegalArt
• See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. at Third Streaming^[11][5]
• Seoul Food: apexart Outbound Residents Talk Shop at Apexart^[10]

2010

• Automatic For The People: John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art
• Bite:Street-inspired Art & Fashion at 3rd Streaming Gallery - 10 Green Street, 2nd FL
• Chapter Four: Let It Die at Lehmann Maupin - Chrystie Street
• Lush Life, Chapter Eight: 17 Plus 25 Is 32 at Scaramouche
• Lush Life at Collette Blanchard Gallery
• LUSH LIFE: WHISTLE at Sue Scott Gallery
• Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2010 Art as Action at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning
• CONVERSIONs | one-night stands at BronxArtSpace^[10]

2009

• Rockstone & Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art at Real Art Ways
• 99 44/100% Pure at Real Art Ways
• Everyman's an Angel at NY Studio Gallery
• PULSE at Taller Boricua Galleries at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center
• resident/alien at Apexart
• Queens International 4 at Queens Museum of Art
• Perception As Object at Monya Rowe Gallery^[10]

2008

• VIDEOSTUDIO at Studio Museum in Harlem^[12]
• "Red badge of courage revisited" at Newark Arts Council,
• Strangers at Privateer
• “Homecoming” at ABC NO RIO
• Summer Mixed Tape Volume 1: the Get Smart Edition at Exit Art
• Intransit at Moti Hasson
• DEADLIEST CATCH: Hamptons at CORE : Hamptons^[10]

2007

• Sex in the City at The DUMBO Arts Center (DAC)
• The Wu-Tang / googolplex Show (Congress) at GBE@passerby
• Six Degrees of Separation at Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art
• AIM27 “Here and Elsewhere” at Bronx Museum of the Arts^[10]