Diane Keys: DeConstruction / ReConstruction

[David Stafford]

Just got back from Diane Keys new show at the Elgin Museum of Modern Art (EMOMA). Wild stuff. I was surprised to see my name in the Catalogue:

Keys continues to burrow into the layer of duff on the urban floor, a sediment rich with meaning "para aquellos con los ojos." (Trans.: For those with the prescience to find the vision of seeing in all its fermented glory)

However, here she has taken a different tack. She creates an imaginary schnook named David Stafford and then, in the parlance of the web, does a "Googlestalk" on him and finds the doppelganger has "apped out." In a nutshell: the Schnook comes to life, if only in the pathetic pixel clippings from his Google searches. It is this Gogolian Construction that Keys is blowing the breath of life into. An act of wizardry that involves pathos, bathos as well as Harpos and Grouchos.

The show at EMOMA was coordinated with an adjunctive show at the SmartArtMart Gallery which featured photographs of the entire DKULT gang at the infamous "CLUBHOUSE." More like pages from a scrapbook than serious photos but telling nonetheless and of course, great fun to see the big cheeses of the DKULT world when they were still little Baby Bells.

[David Stafford]

Isn't it funny how a stranger's snapshot suddenly becomes cultural commentary when it's detached from its context.

[DKeys]

wow--I have no words. as you said, to put it bluntly...wow

great blog and review of the show

I must say that the photographs that I've been sending out are not of me-- they are found objects from a thrift store photo album. I thought it was sad that they'd end up in a stranger's hands

Apping Out? so that's what happened? Gogolian Construction Desconstruction Reconstruction can do that

this is probably around the time you began to fear me

Baby Belle Cheese is awesome