Dennis Keeley: A Survey of the Quotidian Landscape

July 23 – August 27, 2022

Meet the Artist: Saturday, August 27, 2-4 pm

“I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.”

This quote by the British architectural critic and writer Reyner Banham made me begin to wonder about the interesting complexity of Los Angeles as a labyrinthian landscape. Banham’s attempt to comprehend the diversity of connections between people, places, automobiles and the city could point to a desire for all of us to better understand our nuanced relationships with the land, place, freeways, transportation and a myriad of social and aesthetic phenomenon.

My work addresses what happens in the moment in between what one sees and what might appear to some as perhaps the most common experience in Los Angeles.  With our experience of the freeway, there is a perception of traffic, motion, direction, congestion and maddening intervals of waiting. There is also evidence of a poetic environmental setting that invites questions about a more paradoxical and meditative consideration of time and space. 

These photographs were made through the window of my car, commuting from home to work and back.  The size of these images evokes the frame of my car window. I didn’t take a particularly scenic route, go any special place, or wait in a place for something to happen. Over time I noticed destination was almost secondary to the experience of the journey. 

“Roads no longer merely lead to places; they are places.”

                                                                                      J.B Jackson

Jackson’s quote introduces a new perspective for contemplating contemporary landscape. My photographs look at segments of the journey, each as a unique place exhibiting qualities of contemplation and beauty. The work becomes an invitation to be more conscious of the changing vistas and temporal moments at 80mph.  These images find meaning in new spaces, while discovering new places, but more than just places, they feel more like ways of being.                                                

Dennis Keeley 

Dennis Keeley works as an artist, photographer, teacher and writer. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous one person and group shows and he is published internationally in books and studies concerning urban circumstance. He has works in the permanent collections at LACMA, MOCA, the J. Paul Getty Center Trust, and Conservation and Research Institutes, and was commissioned by the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. He has served on the Board of Directors at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, CA for more than ten years.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by generous support from –