“Barbaric Glass” by Susan Keiser | Photographic Performance GalleryTalk
The Photographic Performance was created to feature the works of artist with completed bodies of work and a strong narrative. Susan Keiser’s exhibition “Barbaric Glass“ is the second of four performances to be exhibited during Act II 2024. Susan’s exhibition is discussed in this GalleryTalk.
Artist Statement
I work with a family of four-inch dolls mass-produced in the 1950s—the embodiment of an idealized middle-class culture. Once models of conformity, years of handling have worn away their veneer of polite reserve and privilege, and the contrast between their formal clothing and scarred bodies is both poignant and symbolic. That dichotomy between perfectly curated public lives and private lives filled with anger, confusion, and despair is central to my image-making, as it is to understanding not only their era, but increasingly, our own. Once the silent keepers of secrets, this doll family reveals the turmoil under carefully constructed facades.
Barbaric Glass is one of my on-going, interlocking series of portfolios comprising complex images that address both individual and cultural, histories and concerns. Working outdoors, following the seasons, water animates my work as it animates all life. When frozen, it serves as both metaphor and lens. Worn remnants of plastic are transformed when fractured through sheets of ice—frozen panes that hide, reveal, and distort scenes and narratives the way our memories do, the way our dreams can rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Intuitive, improvised, my photographs are created in-camera, in available light, using real objects.
Susan Keiser, 2024
Bio
Susan Keiser’s photographic work reflects her long experience in the arts and horticulture. Painter/printmaker, gardener/designer, editor/curator, she has always been concerned with building large structures out of small units, entire worlds out of miniature elements.
Situated at the intersection of dreams and memories, abstract and conceptual ideas, her images have been exhibited in solo and group shows in a wide range of galleries, museums, and art fairs both here and abroad, including solo shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Greater Boston Stage Company, Stoneham, MA; Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY; Baum Gallery, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AK; Garage Gallery, Beacon, NY; Anchorlight Gallery, Raleigh, NC, and Catalyst Gallery, Beacon, NY.
Group shows include the Berlin Foto Biennale; Keyhole Art Fair, Murcia Spain; PH21 Gallery, Budapest; The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO; Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, VA; Beard Gallery, SUNY, Cortland; Fairfield Museum and History Center, Fairfield, CT, New York Center for Photographic Art, New York, NY.
She attended Pomona College and holds a BFA in painting from The Cooper Union and a diploma from The New York Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture.
Directors’ Statement
Intermundium is a Latin word that represents the world in-between. Susan Keiser’s images exist in the intermundium, the world in-between the childhood space of play and an ice altered, sometimes humorous and sometimes macabre, photographic dream world.
Nothing is as it seems, or is it? Like all art, the viewer is free to interpret the images as we will. Immediately upon viewing the work in Barbaric Glass we are challenged to feel something about the images. If we are a Baby Boomer or older, many of the scenes may seem familiar. We may recognize a setting, the look of a doll in a vignette, a table, a telephone. Others may simply see compelling work more akin to a painting. Others will recognize a frightening clown from a disturbing movie, scenes from a dysfunctional marriage, a haunted dreamscape – nightmares.
The images stand alone and can also form a narrative cycle if we, the viewer, so choose. We are free to compose a personal script for the work. The images can be relatable stills from a home movie or maybe references to our past as a theatergoer.
Whether grinning or shuddering – we can’t look away.
Amanda Smith and Kevin Tully
October, 2024
website: susankeiserphotography.com
instagram: @susankeiser