The synergy of water and moving pigment creates a mass of form that looks remarkably alive and three dimensional. In the water, the pigment has weight and heft, creating billowing folds and clouds of color that resemble mysterious underwater vegetation swaying in deep currents. Though in this series Keever is no longer creating explicit landscapes, the images still remind us of a technicolor sunset, or a southwestern bluff, evoking the awe we feel in nature.
An innovative photography exhibition at New York’s Waterhouse & Dodds Gallery, Kim Keever: Water Colors showcases the artist’s first series of completely abstract explorations of color in motion. Keever’s earlier photographs involved intricately constructed miniature landscapes that he photographed submerged in a 200-gallon water tank. Lit with colored lights and using dispersed pigment for cloud effects, Keever created dramatic foreign landscapes. Intrigued by the dispersal patterns, Keever began focusing solely on photographing the colors moving through water. The resulting series, Water Colors, has received international recognition.
A former NASA engineer turned artist, Keever’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Keever (b. 1955) lives and works in New York.
Kim Keever: Water Colors is on view until July 31sth at Waterhouse & Dodd, 15 East 76th Street, New York.