Untitled (Primary Title)
Steve Keister, American, born 1949 (Artist)
Fifty Works for Fifty States: In 2008, in a unique partnership with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Vogels distributed twenty-five hundred works across the country, giving fifty works to one art museum in each of the fifty states. This exhibition, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, showcases the fifty works VMFA received as part of that initiative, which bears the same title. As a diverse and rich body of work, the Vogels' generous giftattests to their passion and commitment to sharing contemporary art with the public.
Steve Keister In the 1980s and early 1990s, Keister produced open, irregular sculptural forms that he usually suspended from the ceiling, creating a sense of weightlessness. He frequently painted the interiors with Day-Glo paint, while the exteriors were covered in unexpected materials such as Astroturf, animal fur, or spandex. His sketches for these larger pieces reduce the shapes to simplified lines, expressing the concentrated idea of their ambiguous forms rather than the weight or specificity of their material. Commenting on the number of sculptural sketches in their collection, Dorothy Vogel explained, "It would be hard for us to have a large sculpture, but drawings give you the power in a small form."
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