The School of Art will welcome Jonathon Keats, an installation artist, writer, art critic, and scientist. Keats has been invited to demonstrate contemporary methodologies and philosophies he currently experiments with and his unique position in the world of conceptual, contemporary art. In Cinema Botanica: Pornography for Plants, Keats presents an uncensored act of explicit pollination, filmed in photosynthetic silhouette for projection onto the exposed foliage of white flowering plants. It is a conceptual work that uses the gallery experience to engage the audience into an otherwise second-hand experience.
Keats will give a slide lecture Monday, February 23, at 5pm in Cheever Hall room 215, titled, Extraterrestrial Aesthetics, Divine Genetics, and Other Thought Experiments. Keats will discuss how his art is research. His methods and materials are the processes and paperwork we encounter every day and often overlook. The talk will describe the processes he uses, whether political, economic, scientific, or aesthetic.
Keats will host a workshop on Tuesday, February 24, in which a composition of a song cycle titled Mandeville Cantata will be created. Those attending will map the creek, listen to the tempo, and determine how to recreate the creek in the Copeland Gallery using their mapping techniques and boulders. The project will reflect Keats’ interdisciplinary researching techniques and how they apply to his art exhibitions.
A reception will be held for both exhibitions on Wednesday, February 25 in the Helen E. Copeland Gallery from 5-7pm. Keats will give an informal talk as well as those who participated in the workshop to give a better understanding of the entire project.
This project has been made possible by the MSU School of Art, and NSF EPSCoR. All events are free and open to the public. The Helen E. Copeland Gallery is located on the second floor of Haynes Hall on the MSU-Bozeman campus. Haynes Hall is on 11th Avenue near the duck pond. For more information, please call Erin W. Anderson at 994-2562.
Art Bozeman 