The Abrons Arts Center is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by artist Jayson Keeling titled Behind the Green Door. This exhibition will be opening in our Upper Main Gallery and includes a selection of new paintings, sculpture, and videos which continue Keeling’s deft exploration of cultural production and appropriation as it relates to the notion of transfiguration.

Transfiguration of the self and transfiguration of the image may be one in the same in Keeling’s boldly graphic interrogation of social constructs and appropriated imagery. Keeling is a cipher for a manifold of visual appropriations including porn and horror films, marginalized third world signage and advertising, popular music lyrics and album covers, and various related texts. His operation upon these appropriated subjects is both literally and symbolically textural in his skillfully hand made paintings and sculptures.

Layer upon layer of textured glitter, dust, and debris coalesce in his paintings to create highly frontal, glinting and mysterious new icons. The role of these works is like that of the Sphinx – the composite human/animal poised as a guardian to ancient secrets that are projected into the future through its forward gaze. The sources of Behind the Green Door are often obliterated so there is no use in returning to any one singular present.

Projecting forward, even literally being carried forward in a horse drawn buggy through the Ethiopian countryside in his video like a woodpecker with a headache or a nightingale with a toothache (2009), there is no need for reverse because the construction of meaning is created by what the viewer/videographer passes during the journey. Naturally, the horse will make its physical deposits along the roadside, but this involuntary action is assurance that the corporeal will always be the carrier of these elusive secrets.