Keith Kaziak’s research-based work mines the mundane and the vernacular of the human condition, seeking to answer the restless and existential question of why? Through artistic gestures that embody doubt, illusion, faith, and expectation, he orchestrates staged absurdities between sculpture and three-dimensional space, establishing immersive environments—cite, sight, site—that conjure associations rich in cultural and visual references, and challenge our assumptions about the physical world. Working between dichotomies—existential feelings of Albert Camus’ Sisyphus and the trials and tribulations of Wile E. Coyote, comedy and tragedy, real and counterfeit, assumption and disbelief—he establishes a tension that gives his work power and presence.
His work has been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally, including Supernova: Hope Wang + Keith Kaziak at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, Milwaukee, WI now thru March 2024. Additional exhibition venues include Cleaner Gallery + Projects, Chicago, IL; Abel Contemporary, Stoughton, WI; Quad City Art Center, Rock Island, IL; Phipps Center for the Arts, Hudson, WI; Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, WI; Koehnline Museum of Art, Des Plaines, IL; Creative Cube, Milwaukee, WI; Valade Family Gallery, Detroit, MI; Real Tinsel Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; Quarter Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; CICA, South Korea; DeVos Art Museum, Marquette, MI; Sloss Furnaces Visitor Center Gallery and Ground Floor Contemporary, Birmingham, AL.
Kaziak is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the 2021 International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, and was a 2022 US Fulbright semi-finalist. He serves on the Stevens Point Sculpture Park Board and will complete a public sculpture commissioned by the Wausau Rotary Club in summer 2024. He was a 2019–2022 Interdisciplinary Artist Research Cohort Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he received his MFA. Currently he teaches art-foundry and sculpture as a Visiting Lecturer and is a post-doc Teaching Scholar of Sculpture at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN.