Statement
Relationships don’t finish, they change is a line in a song I recently wrote.
Lately I make songs, paintings, choreographies and videos. I use nostalgic quotes and current conversations to find fictional play spaces and understand the reality of feelings.
I engage in translation — from painting to performance for example, to separate essential meaning from the metaphorical language we use to articulate it.
Perception and behavior are relative.
Perception of color changes depending on what it’s relating to. Personalities and dynamics change with expectations and relationships; perspective changes with age; priorities and desires change with privilege and power.
As objects, my paintings explore the relative optical and emotive qualities of color, along with the historical roots of color theory, abstraction and formalism in utopian, spiritualist and avant garde movements. My inclinations are (consciously and unconsciously) informed by the fundamentals of pioneers in these realms such as Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Bridget Riley, Agnes Martin, Emma Kunz, Hilma Af Klint, Bauhaus, The Bloomsbury Group, The Memphis Group and Anthroposophy. I paint to understand, through embodying, relationships between color, light and form, and as an experiment in manipulating relative perceptions of dimensionality and aesthetic pleasure.
My performances likewise draw from such movements in experimental theater and dance. I am concerned with inclusive, embodied communication over elite, virtuosic language. The work of Peter Schuman, Bertolt Brecht, Agousto Boal, Ligia Clark, Laurie Anderson, Miranda July, Philip Glass, Christopher Guest and Peewee Herman are amongst those influential in my approach to performance making.
I make art in search of a space where fiction and reality are blurred, utility and ornament are equally important, and where people can linger on transcendent moments of transition and slippage.
When I don’t know where to go
When I can’t see what’s truly special about me
When I don’t feel like anything is real
I got my cult
I fantasize about heaven it sounds so fun and full of ice cream bars
My addictive personality makes me crave new more but if I’m close with you’re all I want
I wanted a girl best friend so we could hang out and gossip together
I needed to be wearing just the right purple jacket
Relationships don’t finish, they change
I got my cult
I wanna get to that place where I don’t have the strength
To hide anything
I got my cult
BIO
Kyla Kegler is a choreographer, visual artist and curator who makes paintings and performances that explore existential humor, power dynamics, and pleasure.
Kegler’s practice draws from her past work with Bread and Puppet Theater (Vermont) and as co-founder of the underground theater, “Zuhause” (Berlin). She received an MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship from the Art University of Berlin and an MFA in Studio Art from the University at Buffalo. Her past projects include: Feel Me, a multi-modal project exploring the mindfulness industry exhibited at Box gallery, Canisius College and Big Orbit; The House on Fire Show, a teen web-drama about the climate crisis screened at Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art; Mountains: a puppet soap opera performed at Artpark, Torn Space Theater, and Undercurrent Gallery (Brooklyn) and The Frontier, a performance about cults and community (2023). In addition to making her own work, Kegler runs Agatha Falls— an art gallery and movement space in Niagara Falls, NY.
