Keith Walsh, October Surprise: Opening reception on Saturday October 11, from 3-6PM.
Keith Walsh’s show “October Surprise,” at Malvoyante, confronts our America’s current sociopolitical situation by examining it through the lens of the 1970s: stagflation, governmental ethical crises, the receding Second Red Scare, the genesis of contemporary radical conservatism, and the activism of the Communist Party USA. California-based CPUSA activists such as Angela Davis and Franklin and Kendra Alexander figure prominently in these drawings.
This exhibition extends the artist’s long-term project to protect and renew progressive social legacies in this autocratic era that has scrubbed government data and the history of racial and political minorities. Walsh’s research into political organization documents, socioeconomic data, labor history, judicial and legislative documents, ephemera, and site-specific material, contributes to the compositions and texts in my drawings. Charting, interpolations with historical information and ephemera, portraiture, abstraction, and rhetorical pieces, are different modes of visualizing and narration that allow the viewer/reader different ways to interact with history.
