Erika Keck — CalArts Post Grad Show Y25

Erika Keck

(Art MFA 25)
IG: @erikakeck

(Un)titled )Correspondences(, 2025

Erika Keck’s modestly scaled paintings appear simple. Yet each painting in the series invites an intimate dialogue. These paintings are part of a daily practice. The ritual and routine of a continuing conversation. Keck’s paintings are non-representational. There is no clear illustrative gesture. Yet Keck’s practice is citational, begging the question of what the act of painting formally (re)presents. Keck’s paintings are about painting. Through deliberate constraints including iterative forms and limited palettes, the act of painting extends correspondence between past artist’s practices such as Forrest Bess and Agnes Martin and echo through time dissolving the singularity of identity. The serial paintings repeat a gridded composition interrupted by two arcs. Individually inscrutable. And yet, collectively refuse explanatory legibility, while soliciting the viewer to come closer to make out forms. For this exhibition a stack of paintings in the corner together becomes another repeated set of lines. Then again, the paintings are presented in a tall column next to wall-mounted works showing and not-showing the act of painting.

PROXY CHIMERA ORACLE

CalArts 2025