Keith Lane

Keith Lane’s work is concerned with the relationship between our inner selves and external reality. The body as the intermediary, the skin as the interface between ourselves and our artifacts: our collective culture. So artifacts whether they are representations of the body or our second skin in the form of clothing are overlain with and form a dialogue between various cultural signifiers such as tattoos, fabrics and ceramic designs. Specifically the representation of clothing (so often the iconic T shirt) is used as a de facto body, a shell or ghost of the missing wearer, also referencing a ceramic ‘body’ thus aligning the body with an artifact and layers of history and differing cultural representations. This can be realised in many forms.  Keith Lane chooses the cultural constructs of painting and sculpture.

The human form is represented as an idealized cultural manifestation, as much Ancient Greek as Chinese in its reference. The use of the dragon symbolizes an inner life force or Chi. Anatomy or artifact? The de facto sculptural body portrayed is overlain with tattoo like markings becoming a cultural artifact in itself, also playing with the reading of forms as a depiction of ‘the real’ and the method of depiction in the form of a painted flat surface. All of mankind’s fabrications throughout history whether we call them art or not are all part of an ongoing interpretation of and embedding in of our existence in the world.