I discovered Josh Keyes this past week when I was browsing Barnes and Noble. Several of his illustrations/paintings were in the most recent Juxtapose magazine. I'm seriously considering buying a subscription to this magazine because they had some REALLY great artists and imagery.
Keyes says he likes to think of his work as "a chess game without a board and with very few rules, and instead of chess pieces there are artifacts or specimens" that he uses in juxtaposition to tell a story. His work moves back and forth from political messages involving the urgency of natural conservation, moving images of death, and the coexistence and love of animals.
"I tend to think of objects or structures such as street signs, monuments, mailboxes, and pavement as a metaphor to illustrate the conscious mind or ego... The animals are used to personify and express unconscious drives and energy. The tension that is created when the imagery from the unconscious meets the conscious landscape holds tremendous mystery and fascination for me. It is in this space that I am free to explore the depth of archetypal and mythical potentiality both personally and collectively."
www.joshkeyes.net/biography.htm
Though Keyes expresses the importance of his work being accessible to others, I think he directs his work primarily to the people of North America. The animals he uses are primarily located within North America or along its coasts (accounting for migration), but the animal's interaction with human environments is something that can be understood everywhere.
"Incubate" 2009
"Shedding" 2009
"Burst I" 2009
"Scortch II" 2009
www.joshkeyes.net/paintings.htm
Sometimes life has strange coincidences. I just connected one of Keye's installations to a recent Black Eyed Peas music video, ""I Gotta Feeling." Look his "A Thousand Points of Light" installation (pictured below) in their music video!
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