by Bruce Helander

Keith Kattner’s new paintings on display at the Paul Fisher Gallery are a remarkable series of his own vision mixed with an uncanny knowledge and understanding of art history and the artists who explored the visual mysteries of urban and rural landscapes. Kattner explores a kind of entropy and seeming randomness in an illustrative made-up theater as a universal law, where nature’s own tendency, as the artist sees it, is towards unpredictability and decay. Civilization in Kattner’s opinion is one for creation and order.

Like most artists, Kattner had an inclination at a young age to become an artist, which is not always an easy road to take. He got a job in a pathology laboratory at Illinois State where long story short, the multi-talented artist used his creative spirit to become a surgeon. There is a legacy of many artists who begin their lives concentrated in art, only to find opportunities that seemed more appropriate at the time. Kattner chose to become a surgeon. He supplemented his personal interest in art through serious collecting with an emphasis on pre-1945 American-made art. Years later, planning an eventual exit from the medical profession, he began to paint after work until the wee hours of the morning. One thing that medicine taught him was that if he were to accomplish anything of real value, he would have to strive very hard to realize his goals and that is particularly appropriate in the art world, where skill is a prerequisite coupled with natural talent and idiosyncratic focus.

Keith Kattner now is enjoying the fruits of his laborious studio schedule with a delightful panorama of urban environments where the artist has pieced together little vignettes of an often intimate moment where people and places interact as pawns that actually get moved around in the composition as the artist develops and rearranges his paintings to complete a pictorial storyline. And why not? Kattner has developed an endless palette of architectural shapes from industrial buildings, to residences, to public parks and private backyards accented with classic backgrounds that fade into a sunset or perhaps a stormy evening.

I’m reminded of Gregory Crewdson, one of my favorite photographers, who currently has a show at Gagosian Gallery. Crewdson sets up a stage like an arrangement frozen in time, showing ordinary people and places in a magical and somewhat eerily surreal depiction of a theatrical moment.

Kattner has started realizing his paintings are similar to a full-blown orchestra. “Like a composer, a cello would replace a tree, or a violin may replace a human being, I started thinking more like a composer, and I started thinking of classical artists, like Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.” After all, artists are, at the end of the day, their own creative directors who swing a paintbrush in the air as a metaphorical baton that keeps a preconceived balance with all the visual instruments playing a memorable tune in synchronization. Kattner’s upcoming exhibition celebrates a combination of talents and invention that have no equal and demonstrate that hard work and serious dedication have paid off.

THE SLEEP OF REASON

Art exhibition curated by Debbie Dickinson featuring Keith Kattner and Anthony Haden-Guest opens at the Paul Fisher Gallery. On November 28, 2020, Dassault Aviation, Anonymous Donor and Sotheby’s International Realty are proud sponsors for the opening to benefit the American Red Cross for disaster relief, by invitation.

The exhibition is open to the public from November 29, 2020 until January 13, 2021.

For further information please contact:

PAUL FISHER GALLERY, 433 Flamingo Drive, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Phone: (561) 832- 5255  Email: info@paulfishergallery.com  Website: www.paulfishergallery.com