Mixed Magic, the first solo exhibition in New York by Judi Keeshan, curated by Jared Deery and JJ Manford at Tappeto Volante. The show runs through April 6th, 2025.
In Judi Keeshan’s first New York Exhibition, titled Mixed Magic, curators Jared Deary and JJ Manford present a wide survey of works from 2017 to 2024. To assemble the show, they selected the works directly from her studio, flipping through a massive collection of works as if browsing a record store. They let the images on canvas guide them—the characters and stories revealed themselves to the curators, just as they now await discovery by new audiences within the gallery.
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Upon entering the first room, a grouping of six vibrant paintings grabs your attention immediately. Each piece feels like you are watching part of a story unfold or the throes of a dream take shape right before your eyes. The linework and colors seem to float through the surface, carrying a mystical air. Keeshan’s mastery of layers shows immediately. Through intense, vibrant colors, the environments Keeshan creates within each work seem playful and airy, like a page from a storybook, a tarot card, or an illustrated fortune.
While I may not precisely know what stories the paintings are depicting, I welcome the opportunity to fill in the blanks and decide, as a viewer, what these characters may be doing or what may happen next. Keeshan has an expansive visual language that carries personal mythologies, collective archetypes, and symbols that many of us can also understand. Inspired by both Philip Guston and Joan Miro, Keeshan looks at how Guston shifts playfully between abstraction and figuration and the way Miro’s images are dreamy with childlike curiosity. In this exhibition, Keeshan’s work draws from both artists very well. The interaction between figuration and abstraction, where we see shifts between easily recognizable forms, the beginnings of shapes or outlines of new forms, coincides with Keeshan’s ability to create a visual language that is both part of her own stories and is also universal to viewers.
Judi Keeshan communicates through energy, vibrancy, color, shape interaction, and expressive direct brushstrokes that build up on the canvas. Her fantastical subjects shift between the worlds she creates—whether it be landscapes, architecture, or abstraction—and the subjects grow into their own characters. An example of this is the horse rider in Fiery and Untamed. We do not know where the rider came from, but through a deep, starry blue sky, they move onward, floating determinedly to some destination.
Reality and fantasy are intertwined within Keeshan’s pieces. By using brightly saturated and deep colors, such as that deep blue in Fiery and Untamed, and by depicting hybrid characters or creatures one may find on a fantastical adventure, her dreamscapes successfully come alive. The cosmic and the subconscious show through symbolic figures, such as a shaman-like character, depicted in Earth Angel, and birds, in Spirit Forest. Images like owls or floating eyes help further the sense of the supernatural. As reality and fantasy build and push against each other, Keeshan’s spaces are able to keep expanding into the next chapter of whatever story or dream she is taking us on.
In this way, her works show the passing of time. Whether it be in the waking world or a dreamscape, the layers she places on the canvas become a recording of a dream playing out. Each layer carries with it a new surprise. This allows the viewer to slow down and closely look at each piece as if they were experiencing a dream of their own. Being able to spend time with roughly twenty works, both individually and simultaneously, allows one to explore the world Keeshan creates for us and to feel as if we were standing in the studio alongside her as she created each painting. I enjoy noticing symbols and forms that she takes from mythology and how the pieces pull from many different sources. Mixed Magic is a wonderful title for a spectacular show where fantasy is at the forefront, and I’m left wondering what’s next in the story.
All photos courtesy of Tappeto Volante Projects
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Judi Keeshan, Mixed Magic, curated by Jared Deary and JJ Manford at Tappetto Volante Projects, through April 6th, www.tappetovolantegallery.com, @tvprojects.bk
About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA, she also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017; where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India, and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., and Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn. She currently has a group show up in Nyack, NY, at Perry Lawson Fine Art.