Kelly Heaton

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Mother Board makes the irreverent claim that high-tech society has overwritten the
Madonna icon, formerly possessed with a sanctimonious authority beyond reproach. In
this work on canvas, a digital reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna
Litta” (c.1500) is partially obscured by circuit traces rendered in thick acrylic paint. A
previously untouchable archetype, the Eurocentric Mother and Child has succumbed to
electronic culture, anticolonialism, gender fluidity, and bioengineering.

Kelly Heaton (b. 1972) is a mixed media artist who believes that electricity is the most important medium of our time. She uses circuits to explore the “spark of life” in biological organisms as well as machines, acting as a techno-spiritualist to portray the immaterial  character of her subjects. Some of her work contains functional circuits that seem oddly alive. Heaton asks us to contemplate the transformative impact of electricity on society and the degree to which we have diverged from wilderness. Meanwhile, she looks to electronics for the emergence of new symbols and archetypes for our high-tech civilization.
Heaton’s art has been featured in exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including the ADAA Art Show, The Science Gallery at Trinity College, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and three solo shows at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC. Her work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, New York Magazine, NY
Arts, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Hyperallergic, Artnet.com and Art das Kunstmagazin. She is the recipient of grants from The Peter S. Reed Foundation, Creative Capital, LEF Foundation, Council for the Arts at MIT, and the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program. In 2001, she won the L’Oreal Promotion Prize in the Art and Science of Color for her research with physical pixels. She has been awarded residencies at Otis College of Art and Design, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Duke University, Tortuga Escondida, and Art Interactive. Kelly Heaton received her Bachelor of Art degree from Yale University in 1994, and her Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000. She is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY.