A epic painterly panorama of an alternate American 21st century
New York-based painter Keith Mayerson (born 1966) is inspired by symbols
of American history and pop culture. He depicts familiar figures who
have affected the country's consciousness--in addition to personal
scenes and his abstract "iconscapes"--through microscopic brushstrokes
and coloring. While his formal qualities hint at a French Impressionist
influence, his images also evoke the spiritual and cultural commentary
of the Symbolists as well as the more visionary aspects of American
modernists and the Old Masters.
In this survey, Mayerson constructs what he calls a "wordless novel" for
the 21st century: an alternate history in which the cultural landscape
of American politics is reconstructed to emphasize belonging and
understanding. Since the George W. Bush era, his long-running nonlinear
narrative My American Dream has been presented in separate catalogs as
"chapters," and the ongoing series continues through today. This latest
chapter features hundreds of works ranging in date from 1997 to 2021,
replete with a foreword by cartoonist Gary Panter, an essay by painter
Ann Craven and a conversation between Keith Mayerson and painter Celeste
Dupuy-Spencer.
