Today we’d like to introduce you to Keaton Fox.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My story is a simple one. I was born in the 1900s and I grew up in the 2000s. My childhood was rooted in realness while my adulthood has felt like a simulation. My life and work and ideas and dreams are dances between these two millenniums.
My present world is filled with antonyms of reality. Fake news, virtual experiences, swipes and clicks and notifications replace conversation and connection and touch. We tap a piece of glass to feel things these days. We use the term “too real” these days.
Reality right now is uncomfortable, but it is special.
I’ll always prefer to hang out with someone IRL.
But if reality is so ugly – why do I crave it so intensely?
In a time when the virtual is the wonderful and the reality is a nightmare, I am trying to find a way to understand how and why reality matters. The only way I’ve ever been able to learn is through experimentation and silliness and discussions and creations. The only way I can exist in this weird world is to revert back to my childhood self, incessantly asking why and finding reasons to giggle out of joy instead of fear.
These endless questions create the visual experiments that make up my body of work.
Please tell us about your art.
My art rules!!!!!!! Hah JK – you can never say these things.
But I do enjoy my art because it’s fun for me to make, which is something that only non-professional artists would admit. I’m not represented by anyone but myself so I can say these things. But it is fun!!! It really is!!! It feels magical when I make things and so little in my life has felt like magic since I turned double digits. I am always looking for a way to bend time or feel something new and creating things has always satisfied these needs in one way or another.
My work collages the natural and the virtual. My process requires time traveling backwards into moments that I rip apart, smush into a can of spam, and throw onto a mirror that I then break into little pieces that inevitably get put back together. Breaking things is fun, whether it’s ripping up an old magazine or putting flowers in a garbage disposal or breaking the way your brain has worked up till this point. My arts encourage people to break the old things and mash them into something new and to not be afraid if it looks stupid or strange. Our reality is stupid and strange and art making should reflect that. Make an ugly/cool mosaic out of all the shards of madness that make up your everyday. Ugly art is the coolest art.
And I guess that’s all you really need to know about my art – it’s like an ugly @$$ mosaic that looks like it was really fun to make.
The fun-but-ugly thesis exists in all my varied creations. It is part of all my video artworks that live in galleries, of my public access television show that exists in the 21st century, and of my Instagram account that consists only of videos of me yawning so that I can make you yawn and trick your brain into thinking social media is boring.
It’s ugly and nonsensical and it somehow works – just like the everyday.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
The biggest challenge is artists taking themselves too seriously and continuing all the dumb, reductive narratives that surround the idea of “the tortured artist”.
I know too many people who focus much on how hard it is to be a traditional artist whose sole income is from creating and selling work. You can be a painter and a painting teacher and work on murals with your local community and be a parent and still call yourself an artist. Creative opportunities exist outside of gallery/museum/film festival walls and they are often more lucrative and more exciting.
Community building via creative projects is the sexiest, most rewarding thing a creative person could do. To me, this is the realest form of art right now. There’s also a decent amount of jobs and grant funding for this kind of art (in this city particularly).
“Artists” need to open their eyes a bit more and learn to live creatively instead of creating systemically.
Artists need to be doing things in this world that are imaginative and profitable so they can support themselves mentally and financially without resorting to exhibitionism, self-deprecation, and humiliation. It is possible.
Oh and also SOCIAL MEDIA. I H8 SCL MDA like I hate the Cheeto running the country but I feel it’s the only way people can see what I am creating. I don’t know how to tackle this paradox just yet.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I have shown my work all over the world. I have shown my work in Paris, New York, New Zealand, Germany, Denmark, Rome, Miami, Detroit, Berlin, Los Angeles, London, South Korea, and more, but I’m actively working against building this international part of my CV. I want to show more things locally and engage with the people and the communities around me. When I show my work across the world I rarely can visit and all I get is an e-mail of acceptance, maybe some pictures, and that’s it. It’s like a notification that feels good for 12 seconds and then doesn’t.
I have been working hard to be engaged in the Boston art community as much as I can be. Currently, I work at Cambridge Community Television where I have put together different events so that artists can have their voices heard and their work seen and teach classes to inspire other creatives (some of who don’t even know they are creative just yet). Having the art community in this area continually come to these kinds of events (Art&Tech//Show&Tell Talks, HOT STEAM Science/Video/Art Screening, BYOFruit jam sesh, etc.) would be a dream.
The best way to support my work, and any artist’s work, is by simply showing up.
In terms of showing locally, I have recently shown work at Boston CyberArts gallery (my favorite gallery in the area) and I will be exhibiting some new paintings at an BBQ Art Show (this idea really tickles me) put on by Chloe Dubois on August 25th. I wrote an article for the inaugural issue of Boston Art Review – which is a publication that everyone who lives here should be supporting for obvious reasons. I will also be having my first solo show in February at the Karen Aqua gallery in Cambridge.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.keatonfox.net
- Email: keatonemelia@gmail.com
- Instagram: keaton.fox_
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/keaton.fox
Image Credit:
All credit is to Keaton Fox (the artist).
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