Margaret Keller’s large-scale installations are concerned with the impact of humans and technology on the survival of all interdependent species on earth, as we stumble into the future. Issues she addresses include speculative possibilities for planetary and species survival, climate change, natural disasters, gender, surveillance, and our experience of nature in this digital age.
Using diverse media such as installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, laser-cutting,
3-D printing, video, and mixed-media, all her series share an investigation into the relationships between nature, contemporary culture, and technology, recognizing these relationships as now negatively symbiotic. Keller’s series come from her sense that at this precise moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong. At The Mitchell Museum as part of her solo exhibition Leaning on Nature in 2020, Botanica absentia is a memorial to lost species set in a fictive, but likely, future seventy years from now, since currently these species are critically endangered. Through Fall 2019, her installation Botanica absentia was at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Keller’s art has been shown in over fifty galleries, museums and collections in Chicago, Atlanta, California, Ohio, Colorado, Missouri, Maryland, Wisconsin, Arkansas, New York, Berlin, and Beijing. Group exhibits include Quadratfuß/NX2-Annex Art-Berlin; Cedarhurst Center for the Arts Biennial-IL; The Arkansas Art Center Museum-Little Rock; The Maryland Federation of Art Gallery-Annapolis; The Wichita Art Museum; The Neville Museum-Green Bay; The Tweed Museum-Duluth; The Riverside Museum-CA; The Brea Cultural Center-CA; The Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts; and The Butler Institute of American Art-OH. Selected one person exhibits include The Crisp Museum-Southeast Missouri State University; The Contemporary Art Workshop-Chicago; Gallery 210-The University of Missouri-St. Louis; The William and Florence Schmidt Art Center Museum-IL.; The Center for Contemporary Art (COCA)-St. Louis; and the Contemporary Art Museum-STL. Currently her solo exhibit is at The Mitchell Museum in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. She also focuses on the curatorial and critical aspects of contemporary art, with reviews published in Art in America, delicious line, All the Art, the New Art Examiner, and temporaryartreview among others, and more than fifty exhibitions curated at The Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery.
In 2019, she was selected for the Regional Arts Commission’s $20,000 Fellowship Award for Excellence in Visual Art. During 2018, her public art commission Riverbend, a 133-foot-long aluminum installation representing the Missouri River, was at the Gateway Arch National Park. Currently she is the Artist-in-Residence at The Forsyth School.
Keller has taught full-time as Professor of Art at Meramec College in St. Louis; she was also a Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and in Florence, Italy. Other work has been as Historic Preservation Consultant for The NEMO Regional Planning Commission, Fiscal Analyst for the Missouri State Legislature, self-employed cake decorator, box factory worker, writer, wife, and mother of three. Her studies include Post-Graduate work in Experimental Electronic Media (video game design, animation, digital drawing and video) at Webster University, a Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Missouri-Columbia.
@margaretkellerstudio www.margaretkellerstudio.com
