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James O’Keefe, A Retrospective

Dates: Aug 19, 2010 to Sep 18, 2010

Participating Artist(s):
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James O’Keefe, 'Liberty Coffee Stand'

O'Keefe randomly collected pieces of furniture to put parts of those in another context, and transforming them into a new object. The Liberty Coffee Stand celebrates enterprise of the individual, but at the same time mocks enterprises such as Starbucks.
About the artist...

James O’Keefe, 'Psycho Storage'

The work of O'Keefe is often interactive. Visitors are invited to write down their troubles on a piece of paper and deposit them in the Psycho Storage. Only to be asked to pick them up later, unaltered: a comment on current health care issues?
About the artist...

James O’Keefe, A Retrospective

From August 19 through September 18, 2010 The Arts Center will show a retrospective of the work by Oregon Coast artist James O’Keefe. It is difficult to categorize O’Keefe’s work, but his preference for assemblage is evident. Almost all the pictures and all the sculpture in this exhibit are made in the assemblage tradition. He is strongly influenced by outsider art, Dada specifically Kurt Schwitters, and the assemblage artist Joseph Cornell.
O’Keefe has something to say with his work: he comments on our society and all its failings, but he doesn’t like to preach. He gets his points across with a certain lightness and benevolence; when observing his work you will often smile or chuckle.  “My feeling about these pieces is that they mix a good deal of humor in with the very serious gap between rich and poor. They reflect on the economic disenfranchisement that is taking place in this country before our very eyes. I endeavored to make these pieces look 3rd world and just hope that things really don’t get this bad in America.”

In O’Keefe’s opinion the assemblage tradition is trans-formative. One realizes first that objects have a variety of purposes and meanings, and secondly that objects can be transformed by placing them in different surroundings or by making them independent from their usual function, like Duchamp did with the urinal named “Mutt”.

The earliest piece in this exhibit is dated from 1987, and is titled “The Muse”.  It is a small box assemblage made of wood and utilizes a toy fireman holding a megaphone to his mouth. O’Keefe still remembers the unparalleled sense of freedom he had to include toy soldiers, Indians, dinosaurs, planes and cars in these boxes.

While making his box assemblages, O’Keefe admits to being more attracted to the plastic color of the toys he used rather than implying a story or narrative. The color of the toy would often govern the choice of the next color used nearby etc. However narrative could not be excluded even by the random association of objects and toys.  A kind of abstract narrative was sometimes created as one can see in “Magellan at the Equator.” In this picture the action is non-linear, the meaning is non-linear, and the narrative goes in and out of abstraction. There are many parallels here to a poetic process, but to me as a visual artist this is core magic of the assemblage tradition.

The construction of the cloth paintings in this show were assembled out of strips of canvas - some dipped in paint and then put up to dry on a clothesline. Some were then subjected to more color effects and saturated with wax. When the strips were done, the process of creating the painting was choosing strips and fastening them to a board.  These strips were not found objects but they were nevertheless treated as such in constructing the picture.

O’Keefe still works in the assemblage tradition however his most recent pieces in the exhibit are a few paintings from 2008-9.  These are the Panther Creek Series of line; they are about the “freedom” of the line to be a line. O’Keefe supposes they could also be described as a line looking for a “way”.