Claudia Keep
Night Moves
April 22–June 5, 2021
MARCH is pleased to announce our first solo presentation of works by Claudia Keep, a collaborative online exhibition with LA-based writer and photographer Tag Christof. At the gallery’s invitation, Christof recently traveled across the Western United States with Keep’s paintings in tow, installing her works at sites of his own choosing: roadside locales, neon diners, and amid wild landscapes. The resulting images create complex, universal scenes that invite reflection on notions of displacement, transience, and belonging.
Each evening as the last glow of sunlight sinks beyond the curve of the earth, things begin to quietly change. Dimming heather skies draw our eyes upwards, stretching our crooked spines. Creatures crawl out from the shadows, moths guided by warm winds and artificial light. The moon scales the horizon, visible from the driver’s seat, the kitchen window, the forest’s edge, the top of a skyscraper, the heart of the desert… read more
Installation view of Claudia Keep’s Outsider, 10:09 PM. Image: Tag Christof.
“Looking through a car window, or a curtain, stuff gets kind of mutated, you see parts of things – it’s amazing how so much can be communicated with a sliver of light or color. It’s more exciting, I think, to see something partially, and to have to do some work, as a viewer. It’s more interesting than to see whatever something is completely, I guess I’m rather a voyeur.”Â
– Claudia Keep, Art Maze Mag, 2020
Claudia Keep
West Virginia Gas Station, Early Evening, 2019
Oil on panel
12 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches
Installation view of Claudia Keep’s Sunset, Domino Park. Image: Tag Christof.
Claudia Keep, Missed Exit, 2019 (detail)
Claudia Keep
Beech Hill, 2019
Oil on panel
13 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches
Installation view of Claudia Keep’s 9:07 AM. Image: Tag Christof.
“Keep shies away from the grandiose and the impressive, the main attraction and picture postcard view. Instead, what she offers us in her luscious oil paintings is a window on the world of the everyday: familiar and banal scenes from daily life.”
– Leila Leiman, Art Maze Mag, 2020
Claudia Keep
Cold November Rain, 2020
Oil on panel
10 x 12 inches
“Until we are still enough to witness subtle wonders, they remain unremarkable. Yet upon making these modest discoveries, we may come to recognize beautiful mundanities wherever we go. Like nightfall, they creep up on us.”
Claudia Keep
Looking Up / November 7, 2020, 6:56 PM, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 2020
Watercolor on paper
6 x 8 inches
Claudia Keep
Rain, 8:50 PM, 2020
Watercolor on paper
8 x 6 inches
Claudia Keep
Night Moves
April 22–June 5, 2021
MARCH is pleased to announce our first solo presentation of works by Claudia Keep, a collaborative online exhibition with LA-based writer and photographer Tag Christof. At the gallery’s invitation, Christof recently traveled across the Western United States with Keep’s paintings in tow, installing her works at sites of his own choosing: roadside locales, neon diners, and amid wild landscapes. The resulting images create complex, universal scenes that invite reflection on notions of displacement, transience, and belonging.Â
Each evening as the last glow of sunlight sinks beyond the curve of the earth, things begin to quietly change. Dimming heather skies draw our eyes upwards, stretching our crooked spines. Creatures crawl out from the shadows, moths guided by warm winds and artificial light. The moon scales the horizon, visible from the driver’s seat, the kitchen window, the forest’s edge, the top of a skyscraper, the heart of the desert.
Claudia Keep’s paintings reveal a humble shift, taken for granted yet familiar to all. Plentiful light turns precious, shadows that were once accents now frame each view: a road that could be here or there, a crimson sunset over familiar silhouettes, the spare room where we once spent a sleepless night. Things shift in and out of focus, attention drawn to what was previously superfluous. The unnoticed grows interesting in vacant time. In this time of obscurity are moments of clarity. Here are honest scenes.Â
Preservations of otherwise transient moments, Keep’s work embraces the unremarkable. Her interest lies in what goes unnoticed, illuminating a broader view. These impressions capture the charged nature of ordinary scenes, an electricity created by those who have already visited, and maintained by those who have yet to arrive. Keep delivers this awareness with a kind of emotional realism, using simple methods to evoke the quiet thoughts one feels in private, forgotten moments. Reality is far more mysterious than the elaborate abstract and fleeting conceptual.
 Such works offer a moment of repose, a gentle pause in the most emotive of hours. It is easy to imagine future encounters and unfamiliar concepts, far more challenging to rest our focus on the here and now. Until we are still enough to witness subtle wonders, they remain unremarkable. Yet upon making these modest discoveries, we may come to recognize beautiful mundanities wherever we go. Like nightfall, they creep up on us.
 Claudia Keep (b.1993, Low Moor, Virginia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Previous solo exhibitions include John’s Friends at Galerie Ulysses (Vienna, Austria) and A Day in Maine at the University of Kentucky Medical Center Gallery (Lexington, Kentucky) in 2019. Keep has also exhibited with The Painting Center (New York, NY), Auxier Kline (New York, NY) and Ablebaker Contemporary (Portland, ME). Keep has been represented by MARCH since 2020.

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Claudia Keep
Missed Exit, 2019
Oil on panel
8 x 11 inches

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Claudia Keep Bus Ride North, 2019 Oil on panel 11 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep Consider the Spider, 2020 Oil on panel 14 x 11 inches
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Claudia Keep Rosy Maple Moth, 2020 Oil on panel 10 1/2 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep West Virginia Gas Station, Early Evening, 2019 Oil on panel 12 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches
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Claudia Keep Marcy Avenue, 7:49 PM, 2020 Oil on panel 12 x 9 inches
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Claudia Keep
Evening, In May, 2020
Oil on panel
14 x 12 inches

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Claudia Keep Driving to Richmond, 2021 Oil on panel 10 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep
Outsider, 10:09 PM, 2020
Oil on panel
14 x 11 inches

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Claudia Keep Driving Uphill, 2020 Oil on panel 9 x 7 1/4 inches
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Claudia Keep Late August, 4:13 PM, 2021 Oil on cradled wood panel 10 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep Getting Gas, 2020 Oil on panel 10 x 7 1/2 inches
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Claudia Keep 9:07 AM, 2020 Oil on panel 12 x 10 inches
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Claudia Keep Sun Sets on the Spider, 2021 Oil on panel 10 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep Sunset, Through the Fence, 2020 Oil on panel 14 x 11 inches
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Claudia Keep January, Afternoon, 2020 Oil on panel 10 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep Cold November Rain, 2020 Oil on panel 10 x 12 inches
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Claudia Keep September Morning, 2020 Oil on panel 7 x 10 inches
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Claudia Keep L’Enfance, 2020 Oil on panel 11 x 14 inches
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Claudia Keep Spring Break, 2020 Oil on panel 10 x 7 inches
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Claudia Keep< Walking Home, Early Evening, 2020 Oil on panel 12 x 9 inches
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Claudia Keep Staties, 2020 Oil on panel 8 x 7 3/4 inches
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Claudia Keep Beech Hill, 2019 Oil on panel 13 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches
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Claudia Keep St. Nicholas Ave., 2019 Oil on panel 11 x 8 inches
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Claudia Keep Bangor, 10:32 PM, 2019 Oil on panel 12 x 9 inches
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Claudia Keep Rain, 8:50 PM, 2019 Watercolor on paper 8 x 6 inches
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Claudia Keep Untitled (Spider), 2020 Watercolor on paper 8 x 6 inches
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Claudia Keep Untitled, 2020 Watercolor on paper 8 x 6 inches