Jayson Keeling

Jayson Keeling (1966-2022) was an artist who worked in photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Keeling's work challenges conventional norms surrounding sex, gender, race, and religion. Keeling often reconfigured popular iconography, to explore notions of masculinity, and cultural ritual.
Early life and education
Jayson Keeling was born in 1966 in Brooklyn, NY to Jamaican parents. Keeling's grew up between Jamaica and the Bronx, New York. His bi-cultural upbringing would later influence his work. Keeling graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1986 with an AA in Fashion Illustration and Art History. Keeling started off by working as a photographer and film director in fashion, music, film, and the pornography industry.
Art
Jayson Keeling mines popular culture, and mythology to create artworks that question and deconstruct accepted politics of sex, gender, race, and religion. Keeling works in photography, video, sculpture, and installation.
His work often pulls from different visual cultures and then "jams them all into the same frame." Keeling often works in the realms in-between cultures, creating work that is "neither here nor there." He often uses performative gestures to explore ritual and masculinity.
Jayson Keeling's photographs have been described as violent, sexy, glam and grotesque.
A work by Keeling, a diptych of photographs of legendary dancer and choreographer, Willi Ninja, exhibited at the 2008 "The B Sides" show at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art was described by art critic Benjamin Genocchio as "one of the show's most arresting exhibits" in The New York Times.
Selected exhibitions
2014
Aljira at 30: Dream and Reality, New Jersey State Museum
The First Sweet Music at John and June Allcott Gallery
TEN at Cindy Rucker Gallery
2013
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand Curated by Jayson Keeling at the Lower East Side Printshop.
Another New York at Barclays Center
Psychosexual at Andrew Rafacz Gallery
2012
Bigger Than Shadows at DODGE Gallery
tête-à-tête at Yancey Richardson Gallery
tête-à-tête at Rhona Hoffman Gallery
2011
Nov 2011 - Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds at LegalArt
See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. at Third Streaming
Seoul Food: apexart Outbound Residents Talk Shop at Apexart
2010
Automatic For The People: John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art
Bite:Street-inspired Art & Fashion at 3rd Streaming Gallery - 10 Green Street, 2nd FL
Chapter Four: Let It Die at Lehmann Maupin - Chrystie Street
Lush Life, Chapter Eight: 17 Plus 25 Is 32 at Scaramouche
Lush Life at Collette Blanchard Gallery
LUSH LIFE: WHISTLE at Sue Scott Gallery
Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2010 Art as Action at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning
CONVERSIONs | one-night stands at BronxArtSpace
2009
Rockstone & Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art at Real Art Ways
99 44/100% Pure at Real Art Ways
Everyman's an Angel at NY Studio Gallery
PULSE at Taller Boricua Galleries at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center
resident/alien at Apexart
Queens International 4 at Queens Museum of Art
Perception As Object at Monya Rowe Gallery
2008
VIDEOSTUDIO at Studio Museum in Harlem
"Red badge of courage revisited" at Newark Arts Council,
Strangers at Privateer
“Homecoming” at ABC NO RIO
Summer Mixed Tape Volume 1: the Get Smart Edition at Exit Art
Intransit at Moti Hasson
DEADLIEST CATCH: Hamptons at CORE : Hamptons
2007
Sex in the City at The DUMBO Arts Center (DAC)
The Wu-Tang / googolplex Show (Congress) at GBE@passerby
Six Degrees of Separation at Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art
AIM27 “Here and Elsewhere” at Bronx Museum of the Arts
References
1966 births
Living people
American photographers