Kelley Walker

Kelley Walker (born 1969 Columbus, Georgia) is an American post-conceptual artist who lives and works in New York City. He uses advertising and digital media to make "paintings" using screen printing and/or digital printing technologies. His art appropriates iconic cultural images, altering them to highlight underlying issues of American politics and consumerism. He produces work collaboratively with artist Wade Guyton under the name Guyton\Walker.

Education Walker graduated with a BFA from the University of Tennessee in 1995, and graduated from The University of Arizona with an MFA in 1998.

Art work Walker often presents large-scale billboard-like canvases set at 90 degree angles, sometimes splattered with abstracted patterns in symbolic white color and chocolate, such as in his Black Star Press from 2006, a digital painting triptych on canvas. Walker’s gestures mimic violence, merging ethical corruption with graffiti and pop art. He also makes sculpture and installation art. Created between 2013–14, his identically sized, 2.5-meter tall canvases of powdery silkscreened bricks are lined and separated with fragments of pages from the Italian architecture and design magazine Domus. New York; Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Capitain Petzel Gallery, Berlin; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne; Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan; and Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels.

Controversy On September 17, 2016 Kelley Walker became the center of major controversy after giving an opening artist talk for his show, Direct Drive, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Controversy arose after Walker avoided audience questions regarding his intent in using racial imagery and symbolism. As a consequence there was much backlash against Walker, CAM STL, and head curator Jeffrey Uslip, who resigned two weeks later.

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