New @ SOFA

Keith Wilson

Hyde Park Apartments

October 31-December 3

Hyde Park Apartments is a visual taxonomy of the Austin neighborhood and its various apartment complexes. In Wilson’s wry examination of our built environment, everyday photographs of slightly run down stucco and brick structures are paired with fanciful titles such as “V.I.P,” “Spanish Trails” and “The Jacksonian.” Inspired by Ed Ruscha, Joe Deal, and Bernt and Hilla Becher, the series records ongoing attempts to evoke the ideal through aggrandized nomenclatures.

Wilson is pointing to sites that are often overlooked. “I wanted to encourage people to pay attention to what is around them,” Wilson explains. “It took me several months living in Hyde Park before I realized the bizarre names of these structures. Most people, myself included, drove, walked, biked, texted and iphoned by them without ever noticing.”

These ordinary, largely student filled apartments, with names that reference the pastoral or the historically important, create an uncanny disjunction between the actual and the imagined. Wilson plays off this disjunction through an accumulation of straightforward images that challenge the viewer to look more carefully.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Wilson will bring his famed Cave & Mountain Tour to the Hyde Park neighborhood on Tuesday, November 2 from 7 to 10pm. The walking tour will commence at SOFA and will explore the landscape surrounding the gallery. To sign-up (there is limited space) please email keith@wall-eye.com.

Keith Wilson is a San Francisco based filmmaker, photographer and performance artist. His films have screened at the Berlin, London, South by Southwest and New York Underground Film Festivals. His performance based Cave & Mountain Tours have occurred in San Francisco, Atlanta and throughout Texas including the Blanton Museum and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He is originally from suburban Atlanta and has an MFA in film production from UT-Austin. This is his first solo photography show.