Matt Keegan (1976) is a Brooklyn based artist whose practice examines the complexities of language and cognitive processes. Personal narratives are often a starting point for his work, and the roots of Keegan's practice are tied firmly to the socio-political. By scrutinizing ways and tools through which meaning is constructed, Keegan examines archetypes and symbols, common to global culture, and questions principles and circumstances under which is visual content generated and consumed.

Part of a larger group of works made for “Horizon,” Keegan's solo exhibition, in 2013, the present series of five silkscreen prints on linen, establish a relation between Keegan and Lisbon, a city he had previously met only through the stories of Helena Cardoso, mother of his friend, artist Ana Cardoso. When Keegan was invited to present a solo show in Lisbon, he began corresponding with Helena Cardoso initiating a collaborative process of idea generation for the exhibition. Via phone calls and email, Cardoso discussed various aspects of Portuguese culture, such as Fado - a traditional Portuguese musical genre, characteristic for its sadness, and the favorite music of Cardoso. Keegan adopted for this series the word "shadow," an English translation of the Portuguese word "Sombra," a well-known Fado song. Through its repetition, the printed word appears and disappears via a lenticular-like pattern. Depending on the position of the spectator the text becomes more or less legible, establishing a physical relation between the text and the body of the viewer. Through a symbolic manner, Keegan explores the possibilities tied to the representation of meaning through the text as it becomes image. By repeating the same image in five different colors and various gradients, Keegan points to the possibilities of visualization and variation, where what is depicted is subordinate to the way it is rendered, determining thus its meaning and interpretation.

MC