The Passenger no. 10 2011

Summary

While she trained as a printmaker, Alexi Keywan incorporates drawing and painting into her art practice, although arguably the aesthetic she coaxes from these mediums – through her pared-back palette and fine sense of composition – bring them visually within the orbit of printmaking. The aesthetic of the two pen-and-ink drawings in the Art and Heritage Collection, for example, are not unlike what can be achieved through photogravure. The primary concern of Keywan’s work is the sense of isolation and anomie that is generated by urban landscapes, evident in the collection’s two works: ‘The Passenger no. 1’ and ‘The Passenger no. 10’. Viewed from below, the shadowy poles, wires and digital billboards cluttering the skyscapes read as banal-yet-defiant symbols of 21st-century metropolitan density. But as Chris McAuliffe notes in ‘The art of living in a city’ (accessible through the Explore tab above), in ‘today’s managed and regulated urban spaces’, artist’s such as Keywan also bring a certain magic to the city; ‘lift your eyes from the straight and narrow’, he says, as Keywan does, and you will ‘discover the surreal landscape of cables and clouds hovering overhead’. The perspective, light and composition of the two ‘Passenger’ works bring levity to the sense of dislocation they evoke and to the emptiness of such ubiquitous urban infrastructure. Above quote from http://d2osdfhmhq5de9.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/10760333_Chris_MCAULIFFE_essay.pdf Note - the image in the essay is actually The Passenger No.1 - AM1613026