RA is pleased to announce our 4th exhibition, this time under the RA moniker of Royal Academy. The exhibition will feature two painters: Keith Boadwee (b.1961 Meridian, LA) who lives and works in Emeryville, CA, and Michael Wetzel (b. 1966 Mount Kisco, NY) who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Keith Boadwee is a conceptual artist and painter, with a previous performative practice exploring identity and the queer body. His ‘Enema Paintings’ from the nineties earned him a reputation as a bad boy and an integral part of the West Coast art scene. RA will feature a series of new easel paintings focussed on portraits of ‘Smoking Frogs’ and ‘Emo Youth’ that Boadwee adopts to portray aspects of gender, class and a pathos of contemporary youth culture.
Michael Wetzel employs unconventional collaging of mass produced food signage and the printing of actual fast foods to portray narratives of urban wanderlust and collective corporate takeover. Neon figures walk beyond everyday domestic boundaries into the nocturnal depths of urban cityscapes where body and storefront assimilate and each become chameleon of the other.
Both artists are playful agents of new painting that holds a mirror to the absurdity of the various lives we live (and the fact that many of us are living more than one).
