Curatorial

KEEP Contemporary's Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo on the gallery's present and future, and his own artistic pursuits

"I was running two galleries and doing 24 shows a year at the Jean Cocteau [Cinema] and KEEP," Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo explains. We're sitting inside his space, KEEP Contemporary at Lincoln Avenue and Marcy Street, on a recent gray afternoon, and he seems tired—but good-tired. The kind of tired that comes from realizing you don't have to do 24 shows a year anymore because your gallery has been packed for every opening since day one. Trujillo still curates at the Cocteau, but KEEP is his main focus these days, and he's upped the exhibit schedule in recent months due to community and artist feedback. Things are undoubtedly going well.

His business partner Katy O'Sullivan busies herself nearby as Trujillo explains his past is mostly off-limits. He's more interested in the present. The future, he says, is not a major concern. This feels wise, and Trujillo does seem to have grown as a curator and gallerist since he originally opened KEEP on San Francisco Street in December of 2016. The cluttered feel of too-many-artists remains in the new space ("I can't help myself," Trujillo says, "I've gotta work on that"). But even with pieces spilling onto the floor and nearly into one another, it's hard to
ignore that the vast majority are quite good or—at the very least—things you won't find elsewhere.

You'll see Farmington artist Rosemary Meza-DesPlas' pieces, which experiment with hair sewn into paper, alongside Santa Fe-based (and SFR favorite) Sienna Luna's emotional and mathematical hybrid illustration-paintings; Christian Ristow—perhaps best known for the massive robot in the Meow Wolf parking lot—shows mixed-media statuary (a torso growing seamlessly from birch) nearby Dylan
Pommer's black and greyscale resin sculpture reminiscent of Fleischer Studios characters. Elsewhere you'll find work from Albuquerque's Leo Gonzales, and KEEP has shown or continues to show work from New York tattooer Zach Scheinbaum,
locals Katy Kidd, Nico Salazar and Wonky, plus Instagram-famous creators, outsider weirdos, co-owner O'Sullivan and … the list goes on. It's impressive particularly in its emphasis on current and former locals who eschew tired landscape-and-clouds pieces for work inspired by tattoo, skate culture, anime, lowriders et al.

"You've got to involve the locals—and I own the place, so I can do whatever I want," Trujillo says with a laugh. "But I think KEEP has a great thing going by showcasing work most galleries won't."

This isn't just a story about KEEP's rise as a self-described community gallery, or its apparent need to tone down the number of pieces on the walls—it's meant to highlight Trujillo's own return to creation. After the move to Lincoln Avenue late last year, and at the urging of O'Sullivan, he's beginning to explore and show his own work more often, pursuits that had taken a bit of a backseat while he got the gallery off the ground. Trujillo unveils some of these new works this Saturday in Where There is Darkness, You Are the Light, a small but intriguing spate of pieces that reside someplace between graffiti-esque street art and sign-making.

Trujillo designs the pieces on paper then has them fabricated and cut in powder-coated metal and vinyl with jet-powered water. In these pieces, which he calls "symbiosis," certain distorted-though-recognizable elements, such as Zia symbol iconography or tribal tattoo-
esque design, peek out. LED lights are affixed to their flip sides, which cast shadows and create a three-dimensional effect. Some even create the illusion of movement with the light cast against the wall at an angle. Some have already sold.

Trujillo says he's designed them as far back as he can recall but that the fabrication method is new. He developed the technique while working as a sign-maker; it is indeed the type of thing you might not see anyplace else, and works well alongside the broader themes of the gallery.

"Judging from what people say when they come in, it's refreshing to have something so different," Trujillo says. "There are tons of galleries downtown. They're all kind of the same thing. And don't get me wrong—I love Santa Fe, the culture, the regional art, the Native art; it's here for a reason. But to me, this, what we're doing? This is not new. It's everywhere: LA, New York, Vancouver. This is why [people] love Pop Gallery or Stranger Factory [in Albuquerque]; it's the most exciting and honest work out there."

And, he says, there's lots more to come, which can only mean good things for the subversion of the accepted downtown artscape, as well as for lesser-known artists currently toiling to change the script.

"As a kid growing up in Santa Fe, I would have never dreamt of being where I am now," Trujillo adds. "What made Santa Fe beautiful? Creativity did. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything about KEEP is not normal. We're unorthodox."

Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo: Where There Is Darkness, You Are The Light
5 pm Saturday March 23. Free.
KEEP Contemporary,
142 Lincoln Ave.,
307-9824

Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to PO Box 4910 Santa Fe, NM 87502 or email them to editor[at]sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

We also welcome you to follow SFR on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and comment there. You can also email specific staff members from our contact page.