Fatal Metal Mark #1, 1979
Oil on Photograph, 80" x 48"
Bayat Keerl was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1948. He earned a B.F.A. from the Layton School of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1970, and an M.F.A. two years later from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1987. He has exhibited in Switzerland, Sweden, and throughout the United States, and his work is included in such collections as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Union Bank of Switzerland, and the Swiss Institute, New York. Keerl started his career as a performance artist, and he carried his interest in movement into later work, which consists of large photo enlargements of objects and figures in motion, overlaid with painting. The resulting blurred and shifting images explore culturally constructed ways of seeing and fabricating reality.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.