BIO
Keith Sklar (b. New York) currently lives and works in Chicago. He earned an MA from NYU Steinhardt School in New York and a BA from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He has lived and worked in New York, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and these communities have helped shape his path as an artist. His solo exhibitions include: P.P.O.W, (NY); Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, (LA); Dorsch Gallery, Miami; and Giampietro Gallery, New Haven. Notable group exhibitions include: Suffering From Realness at Mass MoCA (2019); Strange at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2019); Wallpainting at University of Texas at San Antonio (2005); LA at Kaus at Kaus Australis, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2005); SouthwestNET: PHX/LA at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2004); Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000, at LA County Museum of Art, CA (2001), and LA: Post Cool at San Jose Museum of Art (2001). His works are in the collections of SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Sklar’s grants and awards include: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency on Captiva (2014), Brooklyn Arts Council, Arts in Education grant. (2012); California Arts Council (CAC) Fellowship in Visual Arts (Painting) and multiple CAC Artist-in-Communities Grants. Early in his career, Sklar focused on creating public murals in Oakland and San Francisco. Two of these projects, Grand Performance (co-created with Daniel Galvez) and Mitzvah were declared Oakland City Landmarks. Selected Press and media include: LA Times, NY Times, Gorky’s Granddaughter, Boston Globe, SF Chronicle, Arizona Republic, San Diego Union Tribune, LA Weekly, Art in America and ARTnews.
An educator as well as an artist, Sklar has taught art to people across learning styles, identities, cultural backgrounds and age; from grades 6-12 through undergrad and graduate levels, in public and independent schools and museums and community-based settings, including Otis College of Art and Design (LA), LA County High School for the Arts, Wesleyan University (CT), MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, North Shore Country Day (IL) and Opportunities for All, Chicago. Currently he is a Teaching Artist with After School Matters, Chicago. 0
ABOUT
Keith Sklar slips realities between abstract and representation; volume and flatness, materiality and digital. Ranging in scale from miniature to monumental, the content, styles and of his paintings, digital photographs, installations and drawings vary. Often in the same piece. The throughline in his work is the act and action of witness. To the inside oneself and the massive forces of history, inequity, daily life, violence, mass-media , doubt, privilege neglect and self-reflection. interconnections between inequity, wealth, violence and mass-mediaThe His artistic process is intuitive. response process of on the path, lost the trail, carved new terrain, buried it deep and scaffolded upon. Sklar builds, plans, rebuilds, rehabs, covers over, shifts gears until finally, in retrospect, what had always been necessary was expressed. When that exact moment of artist as creator and artist as viewer settled their differences and established a workable, if tenuous, agreement. When curated as an intentional coherent body of work, the viewer is welcomed to move their body through physical space, to wander, to dive into, remember later, though a divergent visual community, or maybe a meeting of work friends ideas and techniques researched, stumbled upon, felt, observed, remembered, revealed and lost.
Ranging from miniature to monumental, the content, styles and scale in his art varies. Often in the same piece. Many of the works are umbrellaed under particular Series. align by theme or subject matter and . In exhibition, the works as a pluralistic visual community of individuals, or maybe just work friends, aligned through ideas and techniques researched, felt, witnessed, stumbled upon, observed, copied, remembered, revealed, lost, recovered. strives to put it in there. Prompting the viewer to move, stand back, to move. by knowing nothing and allowing the work to unearth its own meaning, as author Cynthia Ozick has expressed about stories.