Feature Review LHP Ad AR Jul07 5/6/07 11:13 Page 1
As my interest in pre-Colombian art and culture has escalated into obsession, I have progressively surrendered to its influence in my work. After
numerous visits to the great ruined cities of ancient Mesoamerica, I noticed a formal echo in the configurations of positive and negative shapes
contained in the ubiquitous Styrofoam packaging used to protect electronic products and other consumer commodities. The ancient sculpture
tends to be monolithic, retaining the form of the block from which it was carved, which is analogous to the outer box containing the packaging.
The Styrofoam is designed to structure the space between the product and the outer box, thus articulating the entire volume of the box in terms
of forms and voids. Likewise, the carved surfaces of the ancient sculptures are rendered in positive and negative relief, the imagery pressed up
against the picture plane. Since the mid-1990s, my work has sprung from this coincidental formal confluence.
In 2000, I began to focus on an emerging group of moderately sized wall reliefs made of successive layers of Aqua-Resin and fiberglass, cast
directly from the negative spaces created by an odd array of Styrofoam forms. I liked the warm tonality of the Aqua-Resin, which sometimes
retained a residual skin of Styrofoam. One of these reliefs, The Fall of Tenochtitlan (2002), was especially awkward in composition, a chaotic
proliferation of protruding shapes that included a passage that could be read as a cartoonish profile in negative relief. I gave myself permission,
and gave it a wash of red oxide acrylic paint. From a purist’s point of view, the piece was ruined. I took the plunge and “ruined” the whole group.
In pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, color was as abundant as it is in present-day Mexico and Guatemala. Some materials, such as jade, green-
stone, turquoise, quetzal feathers, and gold, were appreciated for their inherent color. Ceramics tended to be decorated with earth-colored slips.
Almost everything else in the ceremonial centers, including wall murals, reliefs carved in stone or modeled in stucco, freestanding sculpture
such as stelae and zoomorphic thrones, and the buildings themselves, were painted, often with the brightest colors that could be concocted.
Even Teotihuacan, stark as it appears today, was known in classical times as “The Painted City.” Surviving murals preserve a natural, seeming-
ly inevitable harmony of saturated hues. Polychrome sculptures feature an array of colors distributed so as to syncopate the rhythms of the
physical forms. Today, I set out to exploit color for its ability to inflect the visual impact of my relief compositions.
The Styrofoam forms that yielded my painted reliefs were selected for their potential resemblance to pre-Colombian imagery, motifs, and sty-
listic flourishes. Experience enabled me to make educated guesses, but the actual negative casts inevitably produced surprises. The reliefs in
their unpainted state usually conjured aerial views of imaginary architectural groupings. I worked to supplement this reading by superimposing
imagery in alignment with the physical structure. I found that a recognizable image such as a face offered an alternative orientation, while the
bird’s-eye view reciprocated by bestowing a sense of monumentality upon the image.
The painted reliefs evolved through a series of corrections and adjustments. I made marks, painted over them, changed colors, then gave up
and put them away, sometimes for months at a time. While working on some other project, I would think of a new approach for one of the reliefs,
and soon they would all be back in play. This continued for almost three years. The only exception was La Muerte (2002), which suggests a styl-
ized skull from a tzompantli, or skull-rack; it emerged complete the first time, and I let it stand. Tezcatlipoca (2002) is titled after a deity identi-
fied iconographically by the horizontal bands on his face. I developed a cubist riff in which each facial feature is rhymed on an island shape
floating beside it. Profile (2002) is the only Aqua-Resin piece in which I altered the physical structure; I added the shape that reads as the eye
of schematic Mayan face in profile.
The three terracotta masks constitute a subset within the group of wall reliefs. I had isolated three particular Styrofoam forms with symmetri-
cal configurations. In each instance, a series of positive-negative casting reversals produced a terracotta slip casting of the negative configu-
ration. This provided a platform for the mask, composed of a flat face shape surrounded by an abstract symmetrical setting. I fulfilled the logic
of my premise by furnishing facial features improvised from a collected vocabulary of small void shapes cast from Styrofoam; the liquid-edged
membranes of the facial features resulted from the slip-casting technique. I want the masks, like their ancient antecedents, to project an inner
state of ecstatic transformation.
In the pre-Colombian cosmos, the unity of time and space is manifested in the daily journey of the sun. There are many visual expressions of
this concept. The stepped pyramid represents the rising and setting of the sun in diagrammatic form. In this sense, the interlocking shapes of
my cement baseboards allude to the repeating cycles of time, passing through the intervals of influence of the images above.
Steve Keister
August 2002
STEVE KEISTER MEZZANINE JULY 19 – sept 20
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