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    Matt Keegan: what was & what is (I)
    23:47

    Matt Keegan, what was & what is, 2019, documentation of conversation with Ed Keegan, May 23, 2019, Court Square Park, Long Island City, New York. Plexiglas, mirrored glass, aluminum, stainless steel, vinyl, UV print on Dibond. 96 x 109.5 x 192.2 inches (43.8 x 278.1 x 489 cm). Commissioned by SculptureCenter, New York. Courtesy the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco. Video: Jen Atalla

    Matt Keegan’s what was & what is complicates narratives of real estate development through an architectural intervention and shared personal histories. As part of the work, Keegan is joined three times by his father at the site of his temporary public sculpture in Court Square Park to talk about brushes with power, personal experiences of urban development, and feelings of proximity and distance from the continual transformation of living and working space in New York. Topics of conversation will range from Mr. Keegan’s childhood job at a private golf course shuttered by Robert Moses and, much later, his reading of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, to his previous ownership of a bar-restaurant near the Vernon Boulevard—Jackson Avenue 7 train in Long Island City.