Kevin Keaney, At Home, at Lofts at One Powell, San Francisco
Kevin Keaney, Untitled #1, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 72 inches, 2026.
By Mike Hinckley
Kevin Keaney's recent pop-up exhibition, At Home, which opened May 28, occupies an intimate venue: a collector’s 8th floor apartment in the historic Bank of Italy building overlooking the Powell Street cable car turnaround. Installed by Michael Snyder at the Lofts at One Powell , the 15-foot ceilings showcase twenty-one mixed media paintings incorporating paint and college, the largest ones being 72 x 60 inches. The clean and luxurious setting is both perfectly suited to present works featuring urban environments while also offering a stark contrast to many of the grittier paintings which seem to highlight San Francisco’s street life.
Collage has long been present in Keaney's paintings, the combination of photographic fragments and loosely painted surfaces being a hallmark of his work. In this new series, the collage elements announce themselves more boldly. Torn paper exposes layers beneath, revealing flashes of carefully chosen color and imagery that become active in the compositions rather than simply supporting material.
The paintings are noticeably brighter than in much of his earlier work. Vivid reds, blues, and pinks push against passages of atmospheric grays and blacks. Urban imagery—streets, churches, utility wires, figures and fragments of landscape—appears and disappears beneath layers of abrasion and reconstruction, creating pictures that feel simultaneously excavated and assembled.
Kevin Keaney, July Day in Visitation Valley, mixed media collage, 30 x 24 inches, 2026.
What initially appears spontaneous gradually reveals itself to be remarkably disciplined. Despite the drips, splatters, and loose gestures that have become hallmarks of Keaney's style, these paintings possess a compositional confidence that feels new.
Speaking after the exhibition, Keaney described a conscious effort over the past year to simplify and accelerate his process “I kept telling myself I want to improve. I need to improve." His unexpected solution was to work faster than he has worked in the past. Rather than attaching to something he liked early in the painting, he learned to keep pushing.“I can't stay here for two weeks staring at this beast in the exact same condition it is right now.'"
Kevin Keaney, On the Road to Sisters’ Ferry, 72 x 60 inches, 2026.
This willingness to trust instinct and embrace spontaneity has resulted in compositions that are unified and color balanced. They offer the viewer multiple different ways to enter into what seems like a single landscape comprising the exhibition. The collage elements Keaney utilizes are not disguised, he clearly embraces how fragmentary and recognizable forms can activate his compositions. Keaney leans into the technique to make the torn paper elements the key features of his constructions thus eliminating a layer between the real and imaginary places he depicts. Importantly, much of the representational imagery he uses originates from his own protographs thus ensuring the final composition encompasses different aspects of his own gaze.
Kevin Keaney, Sleep Walking Giants, mixed media on canvas, 48 x 54 inches, 2025.
The exhibition's most striking work is the large composition featuring a Ferris wheel framed between two San Francisco churches.
Learning that the piece is almost entirely collage comes as something of a shock. Keany, a self described color enthusiast, has discovered that the color he seeks already exists in the photographs he has made over three decades wandering San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. "The color's there in the photographs. It's in the sky, it's on the buildings, it's in the stripes painted on the street."
The paintings are also deeply rooted in San Francisco itself. Churches, street corners, signs, workers, and neighborhoods become repositories of memory. The Ferris wheel, in particular, carries multiple meanings. It represents both the increasing transformation of San Francisco into a tourist destination, and the spectacle and coexistence of purpose all urban spaces represent. "All great cities experience catastrophe."
Kevin Keaney, That Morning in Bernal, mixed media collage, 23.5 x 17.5 inches, 2026.
Yet beneath the architecture and the layered surfaces lie human stories. The solitary figures that appear throughout the paintings are not symbols of victimhood. These are not marginalized characters to be used for political fodder, they are resilient survivors. As a result, these narratives carry autobiographical weight. Keaney spoke candidly about childhood housing instability and later struggles as an adult that left him briefly forced to call his truck home. Those experiences lend authenticity to images that might otherwise risk sentimentality. These narratives also are not meant to attack affluence, rather they speak to the coexistence of different realities with the microcosm we inhabit.
Likewise, the dogs that frequently accompany these figures occupy a special place within the work. Keany suggests they are the moral center and the spiritual center of the works. Representing loyalty, courage, and the capacity to protect, the animals embody qualities Keaney admires and sees reflected in those living at the margins of contemporary urban life.
Kevin Keaney, Oakland 1997, mixed media collage, 30 x 24 inches, 2026.
Perhaps the most impressive achievement of At Home is the ease with which opposing impulses coexist. Disorder and structure, improvisation and control, intimacy and spectacle are held in productive tension. The paintings are emotionally vulnerable yet unexpectedly comforting. There is familiarity to be found by almost anyone, making these works feel nostalgic and relatable.
More than anything, the exhibition reveals that Keaney isn’t trying to be anyone else. He isn’t chasing trends. He owns that these paintings are intensely personal and deeply lived. They possess the conviction of work made out of necessity. Keaney has always painted with commitment. In At Home, he turns the volume all the way up. And somehow, by doing so, the work becomes quieter, cleaner, and stronger than ever.
Kevin Keaney, Above Boys Beach, mixed media collage, 48 x 36 inches, 2026.
Bravo.
The exhibition, which has been extended and can be viewed by appointment, is part of Skypomp, a Pennsylvania artist-run gallery and project space aiming to make art work more accessible by activating unorthodox venues.
