Contributed by Katy Crowe / The German noun Umwelt means environment. “ultraUMWELT,” the title of Rosy Keyser’s current solo show at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, denotes a world of dynamically connected matter. You can read a great deal into it – earth, ecosystems, subterranean root networks, and of course decay. Her work recalls biomorphic/organic abstraction, but the serendipity her process allows gives her paintings bracing and distinctive freshness.
À la Jack Whitten, Keyser has invented a painting “machine.” With it she pushes fabrics through paint, wax, dye, and various other materials to produce unique unplanned images, though she determines the components’ initial orientation and decides which machined images to keep. Then she stretches them around strainers she constructs and works on them some more. Her fabric supports are not traditional canvas but rather cotton, cotton/silk, and linen, all quite thin and some translucent. The strainers are composed of quarter-round lengths, the curved profile facing out, so that the sides of the paintings curve towards the wall, to be edged with a metal frame. if these unconventional processes may sound gimmicky, they yield authentic innovations.
Musk Runner, the smallest painting, is rectangular, almost square but vertically oriented by means of a piece of fine metallic screen that bisects the canvas, creating a cruciform shape. More object than painting, its distressed surface is a beautiful bronzy color, punctuated by a violet daub and a handful of horsehair. The other outlier in terms of form is Eternal Current – a red piece of unstretched fabric hung from a segment of quarter-round and weighted at the bottom with another. A quarter of the red fabric has been cut out, creating an L shape. A pattern of small white squares abuts a curious loop enclosed by an oval embroidery frame at the center of the painting.
Other paintings are more traditionally allusive, calling to mind the formative earth of the Umwelt. Old Devil Moon reads as a landscape, the low horizon line rendered by a piece of linen fabric. A woven stripe meanders through the surface, and vertical activity in the middle could read as weather or trees beneath the planetary shapes in muted Naples yellow floating across the top. Though the fabric is white and bare, the convex curve of its support, reinforced by the white wall behind it, suggests mysterious depth. In Rave (Sympathetic Songline), also on very thin cotton and largely untouched after the machine push, phantom shadows traversing the surface are enhanced by the convex edges and their peripheral shadows.
The three darker paintings are more heavily worked and familiar. The eye wants to find recognizable features in them. Dark Photosynth, a vertical diptych, conveys the watery aspect of Umwelt in deep blue-black space illuminated by strange glowing creatures in a minty viridian. Dark Dusk Echo suggests the underworld. Its machined surface of creased fabric and finely veined webs and textures – fortuitous accidents – impart the darkness of caves and striations of rock. Although the convex strainers in these opaque pieces are not as integral to overall viewing as they are in the others, they still soften the edges. Throughout, Keyser deftly balances calculation and chance with an eye to simulating and quietly celebrating natural phenomena. It’s a wonderful show.
“Rosy Keyser: ultraUMWELT” Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, 1327 S. Boyle Avenue, East Los Angeles, CA. Through June 7, 2025.
About the author: Katy Crowe is a Los Angeles-based painter, working in oil and watercolor. Her most recent solo show was in 2022 at As Is Gallery in LA.
