Keats in orbitBy Chris DeMento
Jonathon Keats did not fail philosophy by any stretch. But it failed him. Frustrated with Science’s inability to account for the very uncertainty it breeds, disconcerted by elaborate, infinitesimally ornate re-explanations of theoretically problematic anomalies embedded in the canon, tired of the validity namegames and the cyclical limits of Rationalism, the scholarly Keats has turned away from the strictures of logic and embraced another mode altogether: making art of his arguments.
Keats’ latest installation at Modernism Gallery, “Miracle Works,” demonstrates the boundlessness of his curiosity. During a recent interview, he talked about quite a few intergalactic possibilities and the cosmic multi-dimensionality of his work, which means I listened with one ear open while the other received, through an earphone, a half-hour-long sonata for astral organ, which simulated the pressure-sound of stars decaying (they thrum away at about 30,000 octaves below what the human ear can process).
Using math chops, a working knowledge of astrophysics (both its literature and its tablature), his formidable imagination, and a little program Steve Jobs likes to call GarageBand, Keats has arranged what he calls “an opus for the spheres,” transposing heretofore inaudible frequencies into a listenable key, collapsing lightyears and making them both intelligible and accessible.
One of Keats' orbit systems (print)
Similarly, the visual components of his art require that the viewer let go his preoccupation with scale as well as surrender the notion of his own mortality. Keats encourages the viewer to adopt the point of a view of a deity, one who happens to be in the market for intergalactic miracles. His works are packaged and licensed as schemata—prints, essentially—that detail cosmic events like supernova fireworks displays, or the systematic re-ordering of planetary orbits. He sees patterns, patterns, patterns; one of the more interesting conversational tangents we explored was the idea that a famous book, Moby Dick, let’s say, might also be read musically, or even spatially, so long as one is willing to consider that Moby Dick might exist as a repeatable universal idiom across a range of media.
On the surface, Keats’ art runs the risk of being passed off as the result of reading too much string theory. Suspiciously numinous though it may seem, “Miracle Works” is not interested in apologizing for its unthinkable temporal/spatial scope. Most questions of mechanics -- for example, the manipulation of solar wind -- Keats leaves for yet unborn, unhappy schlubs in jetpack labcoats.
The man himself
Keats himself still dresses like a philosopher, and one has the feeling he still reads way too much, but he’s turned a corner in terms of his choice to give himself over full-time to scratching the art itch, on the strong supposition that while Science wants to define and classify ad absurdum, it is art and art alone, in medias res, which cares to understand anew.
"Miracle Works"
Modernism Gallery
685 Market, SF
(415) 541-0461
Gallery hours: Tues.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
http://www.modernisminc.com
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