Keihm, Colleen

Colleen Keihm constructs imaginary spaces by deconstructing real spaces. In her Cuts and Structures series (2017-2018), she photographs the pages of art history textbooks that picture Richard Serra’s large-scale sculptures. She then digitally prints her 5x7 inch negatives or takes them into the darkroom to splice and overlay them further. The resulting patterns are laid out on light sensitive paper to create abstract photograms. By deconstructing the grandeur of Serra’s work through a re-imagined—and implicitly feminist—lens, Keihm, in her own words, “emphasizes light pushing through their absence rather than the shadows created by their presence.” Her analog compositions exist as new spaces that push beyond the confines of built and visual histories while inviting us to think and see beyond the common understandings of art and architecture.

Colleen Keihm completed her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2014) and her BS in Photography from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA (2007). She has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at the Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL (2015); the Koehnline Museum of Art, Desplaines, IL (2016); and Zentrale, Wedding, Germany (2014); among many others.