OCTOBER SURPRISE

11 Oct - 8 Nov

Keith Walsh’s show “October Surprise,” at Malvoyante confronts America’s current sociopolitical situation by examining it through the lens of the 1970s: stagflation, governmental ethical crises, the receding Second Red Scare, the genesis of contemporary radical conservatism, and the activism of the Communist Party USA.   California-based CPUSA activists such as Angela Davis and Franklin and Kendra Alexander figure prominently in these drawings. 

This exhibition extends the artist’s long-term project to protect and renew progressive social legacies in an autocratic era that has scrubbed government data and suppressed the histories of racial and political minorities.  Walsh’s research into political organization documents, socioeconomic data, labor history, both archived and site-specific material, as well as Constitutional, judicial and legislative documents, contribute to the compositions and texts in the drawings on display. Charting, interpolations with historical information and ephemera, portraiture, along with rhetorical pieces, are different modes of visualization and narration that allow the viewer/reader multiple ways to interact with history and its relation to the present moment.