The Pit is pleased to introduce a new series of ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS offering an in-depth exploration of artists' practices within our program and with upcoming exhibitions at the gallery.

ROSTER ARTIST:  KEITH BOADWEE

Keith Boadwee was born in Meridian, MS in 1961 and currently lives in Emeryville, CA. His unique sardonic sense of humor is ever present in his work, which engages with painting’s history both critically and earnestly in a similar vein to Viennese Actionism or Paul McCarthy. The artist possesses a childlike joy for all things sexual, fecal, and phallic, all the while remaining engaged in a critical reflection of art history and the place of queer artists within it.

Boadwee frequently challenges art historical canons and "good taste" by incorporating his body and bodily functions into his work. A common theme is painters making paintings, or the re-working of compositions by masters. He gained recognition showing with ACE Gallery in 1990s Los Angeles for his "enema paintings," created by expelling paint onto canvas (reviewed by Andrew Perchuk for Artforum). At a time when Boadwee's friends were dying of aids, the exploration of queer identity in his work was considered taboo. His oeuvre also includes photographic self-portraits and scatological drawings exploring themes of agency and pleasure. 

“It would have been so luxurious to have the power to piss in the street.”

Joyce Mansour (Beneath the Central Tower, for Matta. 1965)

Some artists Boadwee has been inspired by over the years include Peter Angermann, Chris Burden, and his good friend Nicole Eisenman.  Even during the early performance years, Boadwee's practice has been rooted in painting , as evidenced by his nods to Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, and Jackson Pollock. 

CLUB PAINT

Keith Boadwee & Club Paint is the artist's continuing body of collaborative paintings. Club Paint initially started as a collaborative painting project organized and initiated by Boadwee with his former students. Over time, Boadwee has taken control of all narrative and aesthetic decisions. The paintings are made using Boadwee's drawings as blue prints. While they are sometimes painted with the help of other hands (Club Paint), more recently they are just as likely to be made solely by Boadwee himself.

"My works are very easy to access and intentionally so.  I don't need to say anything about them. That's my statement."

Keith Boadwee (2026)

FROGS AND DOGS

Boadwee's frogs and dogs subvert heteronormative ideas of identity and desire. Deliberately de-sexed to resist gendered readings, these animals become unlikely vehicles for exploring attraction and longing. The work lives in the space between satire and sincerity—anthropomorphism lets Boadwee address solitude, self-medication, anxiety, and depression with a humor that traditional portraiture can't access.

Boadwee describes the frogs as loosely autobiographical, an uncontroversial proxy for the human body. The poodles operate differently. Grouped under the title Spiritual Abstraction, they function as formal studies, their concentric circles and overlapping forms echoing the abstract vocabularies of Hilma af Klint, Sonia Delaunay, and Agnes Pelton. Where the frogs turn inward, the poodles open outward—engaging broader questions of spirituality and transcendence in a moment of social upheaval.

Boadwee has been painting frogs, dogs, and fish over the past decade. Within the context of an overall practice which relies heavily on performance, Boadwee’s animal paintings may feel like an outlier. But the artist’s use of self-imposed constraints and rules draw a line through his various practices. He works tirelessly creating one painting per day - a self-imposed schedule which frees him from potential self-doubt and allows him to focus on the act of painting itself.

“Those longing eyes, furtive gestures, irresistibly cute little paws and webbed feet, tongues and smokes luridly dangling from lips—it all reeks of afterparty. As a result of this tabula rasa, borderline-Gumby physicality, a door opens into a free-range, psychosexual playland, in which associations are left at the door in favor of romps through fetishy innuendo.” - Trinie Dalton

Boadwee received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, CA in 2000 and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA in 1989. Boadwee’s work was the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions including at institutions Atelier 34zero Museum, Jette, Belgium (2017) and SF Camera Work, San Francisco, CA (1994). In 2021, Nicole Eisenmann invited him to exhibit in a two-person show at the Flag Art Foundation in New York. His work has also been included in thematic exhibitions such as AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2015); AA Bronson’s Sacre du Printemps, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2015); 15 Minutes of Fame: Portraits from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2010); Prospect 1.5, New Orleans, LA (2010); Into Me / Out of Me, MoMA PS1, Long Island, NY and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2006); Grey Area, California College of Art, San Francisco, CA (2003); Bay Area Now 3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2002); The People’s Plastic Princess, Banff Center, Calgary, Canada (2000); Double Trouble: The Patchett Collection, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (1998); Selections from the Peter and Eileen Norton Collection, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA (1995); Bad Girls, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1994); Slittamenti, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1993); and Performance Behind the Curtain, White Columns, New York, NY (1992). 

SELECTION OF NEW WORKS