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April 8, 2022 • Schneps Media
Artist Steve Keene showcases works of pop culture on plywood
BY BOB KRASNER
Steve Keene makes art — a
lot of it. It makes him happy
that people hang it on their
walls and enjoy it.
If it were up to him, though,
this article would probably stop
right here, as explaining his process
and the impetus behind it are
not at the top of his to-do list.
“I don’t want to be analyzed,”
he states. “I just want people to
like what I do.”
Keene, whose past gigs include
being a dishwasher and a DJ, has
produced over 300,000 paintings
to date. That estimate is based on
the amount of plywood — which
he uses in lieu of canvases — that
he’s bought over the years, as
there’s no record of exactly what
he’s accomplished.
He’s created most of them in
a cage that he built in his studio
in Brooklyn, although he’s been
known to set up in an art gallery
and paint away, creating up to 100
paintings a day assembly line style.
Whether he’s made those works in
public or in private, he sees the
process as an experience that he is
sharing with his patrons.
“I do like people to know that
what I make is a souvenir of the
way I work — they get part of
the performance of that day,” he
explains. “And it makes me happy
when people say things like,
‘Thank you, I’ve never seen anything
like this before.”
One of his more popular themes
are classic album covers, but he
insists that “the subject matter is
not important.” Nevertheless, he
is widely admired by music fans,
many of whom bought his work at
the Thread Waxing Space, an alternative
music venue that thrived
in Lower Manhattan in the 1990s.
“The album covers are about
1/3 of my work,” he says. “I kind
of think of them as relics of a time
when you were a kid and you’d
spend an hour trying to decide
what album to buy.”
For the record (no pun intended),
the first album he bought
was “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron”
by the Royal Guardsmen, and
his first single was The Beatles’
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
“Lady Madonna.”
His first big exposure commercially
came with a commission to
create an album cover for the band
Pavement in 1995. Since then there
have been other music projects,
including a Klezmatics album that
won a Grammy and gallery shows
that have been hugely successful,
with 1,500 or so pieces (or as little
as 2 for $5) flying out the door at
the Frieze fair — and somewhere
between 5,000 to 7,000 sold at a
show at the Marlborough Gallery,
where he spent a month painting
in person.
It was at Keene’s show in LA
in 2016 that East Village photojournalist/
producer/activist Dan
Efram realized that Keene was not
keeping track of his work.
Efram, who’s been a fan of the
artist for decades (with 100 or so
Keene pieces to prove it), successfully
pitched the idea for a Keene
show to Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal
Projects gallery and ended up
curating the show with Fairey as
well as photographing the 800
pieces that made up the show for a
possible catalog.
“He sold 550 pieces on the
first night,” Efram informs us.
“And I realized that Steve was not
archiving his work.”
Initially the idea was to reproduce
the works from that show
in a book, but Efram got ambitious
— maybe a little crazy
— and changed the project to
an overview of Keene’s career.
A successful Kickstarter campaign
made it possible, but he
couldn’t have done it without the
help of the Keene collectors who
sent him their favorite pieces so
that he could photograph them
for the project.
The result is a gorgeous 12” x
12” (that would be the size of an
LP cover), 265-page hardcover
ode to Keene’s prodigious output.
“The book is a love letter to his
work,” says Efram.
Keene has slightly mixed feelings
about the book, but not about
the quality.
“It’s super beautiful,” he admits.
“If I don’t try to overthink
it, it’s really great. But the idea
of putting everything in a book
is that it’s frozen in time. For me
that’s complicated. But it’s great,
and very flattering.”
The Public Access gallery will
be hosting a four day show which
will also serve as a book launch.
Gallery owner Leo Fitzpatrick
didn’t exactly curate it, though.
“Steve came up with a plan and
I facilitated it,” he explains. “I’m
letting Steve do what he wants.”
That will probably involve
hanging 500 paintings at
about $5 each.
“Steve is best described as genuine,”
he opines. “He has a sig-
Painting his own way
PHOTOS BY BOB KRASNER
Above: Steve Keene in his cage,
a structure inspired by a Frank
Gehry show.Right: In Keene’s
living space, the platform on
which the family watches TV
is made from a pile of finished
paintings.