Keith Mayerson

Keith Mayerson, Cheech and Chong, 2023. Oil on linen, 48 × 64 in. (121.92 × 162.56 cm)

A Conversation: Keith Mayerson and Ryan Linkof
at Karma Los Angeles
Thursday, May 30, 6–7 pm

Karma

7351 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California

Karma presents a conversation between artist Keith Mayerson and Ryan Linkof, curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, on the occasion of Mayerson’s exhibition My American Dream, City of Angels at 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, on view from May 23–July 19, 2024.

Keith Mayerson (b. 1966, Cincinnati, Ohio) paints familiar figures from American history and pop culture, personal scenes, and abstract “iconscapes.” Mayerson mines the histories and cultural resonance of his subjects—the Muppets, gay activists and icons, and national parks are all part of his extensive cosmology—transforming them into allegories of resilience and determination. Informed equally by his undergraduate education in semiotics and his decades of teaching cartooning, Mayerson considers his paintings to be embodiments of national sentiments. Using highly controlled brushstrokes and only colors in the CMYK system, he channels the French Impressionists, American modernists, and the Hudson River school in equal measure. While he paints, Mayerson immerses himself in media related to his subjects, inviting his subconscious to take over, leading to a practice that is at once research-based and psychologically-driven. Since the early 2000s, his ongoing, non-linear narrative My American Dream series has been presented in discrete exhibitions as chapters. Mayerson lives in Los Angeles.

Ryan Linkof joined the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in July 2018 as the museum’s first curator. Previously, he served as part of the founding curatorial team of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and as a curator in the photography department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His research and curatorial projects explore the intersections of art and mass media. He has organized over twenty exhibitions, authored and edited numerous publications, and served as a visiting professor at University of Southern California and the California Institute of Technology.

Read more and register HERE

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Keith Mayerson Book Launch and Exhibition
at Karma Bookstore, New York
Saturday December 10, 2022, 3–6pm

Karma Bookstore
136 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10009

In honor of our latest publication, Keith Mayerson, My American Dream, we are pleased to invite you to the book launch and exhibition at Karma Bookstore this Saturday December 10, from 3–6pm.

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Keith Mayerson Artist Talk
The Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 4:00 pm via Zoom

Keith Mayerson (b. 1966, Cincinnati, OH) is inspired by symbols of American history and pop culture, and depicts familiar figures who have impacted the country’s consciousness, in addition to personal scenes and his abstract “iconscapes.” His work allegorizes themes of resilience, determination, and the “American dream.” Iconic images, heroes, places, and events are rendered luminous and transcendent through Mayerson’s micro-managed brushwork and coloring. His subjects are often selected for their backstories and cultural impact; in Mayerson’s paintings, they embody contemporary national feelings and sentiments. While his formal features hint at a French Impressionist influence, his images could be seen to recall the work of Symbolists in their spiritual components, cultural commentary, and review, in addition to being inspired by the more visionary aspects of American Modernists and the Old Masters.

Register and read more HERE

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Keith Mayerson in The New Social Environment #465 “My American Dream: Keith Mayerson”
January 4, 2022 at 1pm ET

Artist Keith Mayerson joins Brooklyn Rail Editor-at-Large Jason Rosenfeld for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Caroline Crumpacker.

Sponsored by Karma and produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

Register and read more HERE

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Keith Mayerson, Me in the Proust Room for our 40th birthday, oil on linen, 22 × 30 inches; 55.9 × 76.2 cm

Artist talk: Keith Mayerson
USC Roski School of Art and Design
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 5:00pm EST

Keith Mayerson (b. 1966, Cincinnati, OH) is inspired by symbols of American history and pop culture, and depicts familiar figures who have impacted the country’s consciousness, in addition to personal scenes and his abstract “iconscapes”. His work allegorizes themes of resilience, determination, and the “American dream.” Iconic images, heroes, places, and events are rendered luminous and transcendent through Mayerson’s micro-managed brushwork and coloring. His subjects are often selected for their backstories and cultural impact; in Mayerson’s paintings, they embody contemporary national feelings and sentiments. While his formal features hint at a French Impressionist influence, his images could be seen to recall the work of Symbolists, in their spiritual components, cultural commentary and review, in addition to being inspired by the more visionary aspects of American Modernists and the Old Masters. Mayerson’s paintings are informed by his immersion into his subjects. Like a method actor, he listens to albums, biographies, or other audio materials on the figures in question while painting them. The entrenched conceptual investment and consideration behind his practice imparts an earnest, emotive resonance. His exhibitions are often installations of images that create larger narratives. Each work is imbued with allegorical content that relates to the world, yet allows through its formal nuances for the transcendent and sublime. The works stand on their own for form and content, but like a prose poem of images on walls, experienced in context the images as a series, the viewer creates the ultimate meaning for the installations. Since the George W. Bush era, his long running non-linear narrative “My American Dream” has been presented in separate exhibitions as “chapters” and the ongoing series continues through today.

Keith Mayerson studied Semiotics and Studio Art at Brown University and received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Mayerson’s work was prominently featured in the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art with a solo show My American Dream, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and the Whitney Museum’s inaugural downtown show, America is Hard to See. His graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged, a collaboration with the writer Dennis Cooper, is well known among graphic artists. A graphic novel biography of James Dean is forthcoming, to be published by Fantagraphics, and is editing a book on the outsider cartoonist Frank Johnson, also for Fantagraphics to be published soon.

His recent solo exhibitions include the Elaine de Kooning House Foundation, East Hampton (2019); Marlborough Gallery, New York (2019); and the Bridge, Bridgehampton (2019). He will be having solo exhibitions of painting and drawing at KARMA Gallery NYC, forthcoming this September, 2021. Keith Mayerson’s work is featured in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Columbus Museum of Art, The Davis Museum of Art of Wellesley College, MA, American University Museum, Washington, D.C., the RISD Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Please register here.

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