Joshua Abelow & Steve Keister

Real Estate is pleased to present Joshua Abelow and Steve Keister’s two-person exhibition: Necropolitan Avenue. The two artists work in different media, but share themes and affinities that lend this exhibition the intimacy of real collaboration. Both artists push the boundaries of authenticity, expressionism, and cultural appropriation. They share an interest in the totemic grand visionary narrative associations seen in both primitive art and the New York School’s existential search.

Abelow and Keister use the totem as a point of departure for psychological examination as well as a playful exploration of outside cultural influences. Luxury culture in today’s hyper-capitalist landscape is richly lampooned in Abelow’s appropriation of some of the seedier corners of the graphic art of the recent past. Keister draws upon pre-Columbian art, but makes his castings from discarded styrofoam packaging: the leftover husks of material excess. Both artists juxtapose the contemporary and the disposable with the eternal and the historic, creating a rich material narrative platform for larger cultural criticism that asks real questions about the possibility of legitimate spiritual search in our time.

The poisoned, the hypocritical, and the dead are the main characters in this provocative dialogue between these two artists. As Abelow puts it, “the show is a response and examination of our current political crisis. Our culture's obsession with luxury has created a 'country of the dead' where we all live on Necropolitan Avenue…”

Joshua Abelow was born in Frederick, Maryland in 1976. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include Halsey McKay, East Hampton; Allen & Eldridge, NY; ober gallery, CT; Tif Sigfrids, LA; James Fuentes, NY; and BFA Boatos Fine Arts, São Paulo.

Steve Keister was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1949. He received his BFA in 1971 and MFA in 1973 from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome. Recent solo exhibitions include Mitchell Algus Gallery, NY; Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA. His work was recently featured at 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, NY and Radiator Gallery in Long Island City.