North Room:
Keith Mayerson
Hamlet 1999, Pt. 3
November 18 - December 20, 2003
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 20, 6 - 8 pm
Hamlet 1999, Pt. 3 represents the third section of a larger cycle of paintings that have been assembled to portray a storyboard, or comic-like nonlinear narrative that invokes many of the same attributes of the original Hamlet, updated to have allegorical relation to our century. The artist has "cast" "actors" he has "employed" since the beginning of his career, primarily Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, along with the appropriation of other source material culled from film stills, photos, and images taken from famous works of art (in addition to dreamlike “abstract” works in which ghostlike icons might be perceived) to create scenes for an updated, purposefully open-ended and carnivalesque version of Shakespeare's story of disillusionment, spirituality, subjectivity-in-doubt, and oedipal conflict.
Keith Mayerson first came to prominence in the early 1990’s with Pinocchio the Big Fag, his homoerotic retelling of the famous children’s story, which premiered at the Kiki Gallery in San Francisco and traveled to the Drawing Center in New York and to Los Angeles. After moving to New York City in 1994, he began showing his paintings in major museums and galleries, including his first New York solo show in 1997 where he displayed raw, psychedelic abstraction alongside synaesthetic paintings from film stills. He has published a critically acclaimed graphic novel (a collaboration with Dennis Cooper), and is on display as part of the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This will be his first solo show with the gallery.
Derek Eller Gallery is located at 526 West 25th Street, 2nd floor. Hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 11am - 6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery at 212.206.6411 or visit www.derekeller.com.