Keltie Ferris translates the concept of identity on an abstract level. His paintings are characterized by references to Performance Art, Abstract Painting and digital imagery, combining the illusion of space with direct bodily experience. He occasionally uses his own body as a tool, while his painting as such evokes a corporeal space due to the change between spray-painted, hand-painted and relief-like elements. Ferris grasps painting as a personal index that rejects easy gendered identification of the body, suggesting a performative state of identity.
Keltie Ferris’ (US 1977) works are part of renowned museum collections such as The Yale University Art Gallery , The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City or The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Oppenheimer Collection), Overland Park. In 2018 The Speed Art Museum in Kentucky dedicated a solo exhibition to Keltie Ferris. Recent solo exhibitions include "Body Prints and Paintings" at Gana Art Sounds, Seoul, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (both 2021), the University Art Museum at SUNY Albany, New York (2016) or "Keltie Ferris: Doomsday Boogie" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014). In 2023 his works were shown at the exhibitions „Empowerment“, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and „Die unhintergehbare Verflechtung aller Leben“, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany.