A collection of photographs, sculptures and printed texts, Matt Keegan’s composite vision of New York City captures the gaudy and the gritty, the mundane and the maniacal, and the everyday moments that inundate us. Like everything else in the city, Keegan builds on what came before, inviting collaboration and openly riffing on influences. A fawning interview with Milton Glaser serves as the exhibition’s press release, while Glaser’s famous “I ♥ NY” logo is reworked here—in collaboration with David Reinfurt—with a bright red apple in place of the heart.
The backbone of the exhibition is a series of photographs depicting New York in public, wrapping around the gallery at eye level. Organized loosely in a geographical order, the photographs are mounted on sheet metal spray-painted in the colors of New York bridges, with names like “George Washington Bridge Grey” and “Pulaski Red.” The images are the sort of thing that creeps into you subtly. Their power is in the repetition of seeming mundanity: a bird’s-eye view of a busy street corner, those ubiquitous ConEd subway posters, and two women lounging on brownstone steps in the sun. Keegan’s selection of images presents a vision of the social sphere of the city, but also prompts his audience to build their own narrative through connections.
Matt Keegan's Apple NY
The exhibition subtly explores various sides of conflict in New York’s development: the different waves and counter-waves that make this a unique city. In the video “Biography / Biographer,” for example, Keegan’s father talks about working as a teenager at a golf club patronized by Robert Moses, while a number of the photographs depict the West Village, that jumble of mis-matched streets once home to Jane Jacobs. Maybe this is the phenomenon by which, in a place as densely populated as New York, any change has a rippling effect and will be rebuilt and recast by future generations. Towards the end of the interview-turned-press release, Glaser reflects on how New York has changed since he first put “I ♥ NY” to paper: “There is less inexpensive housing for people on every level… But the vitality of the city, the energy of the city, and the ambition of the city really keep you alive.”
Through June 18, D’Amelio Terras, 525 W. 22nd St., 212-352-9460.
