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About the Exhibition
Salon 21 is pleased to present “Vignette,” a group exhibition, opening to the public on September 12, 2025. This exhibition will be Salon 21’s first in its new location at Water Street Associates (WSA) in the Financial District. The group show includes works by Ben Cowan, Allyson Keehan, Thérèse Mulgrew, and Carly Owens Weiss.
“Vignette" brings together four contemporary painters whose practices embrace the materiality of paint while reimagining the quiet power of stillness, symbolism, and personal narrative. Through hyperrealism, art historical references, and investigations of the body, the works in this exhibition elevate the overlooked, such as objects, gestures, textures, into richly constructed vignettes that confront the complexities of identity, memory, and representation.
About the Artist
Allyson Keehan is an Irish artist based in Glasgow, UK. She holds a PhD in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art and an MFA from Byam Shaw School of Art, UAL. Her work explores the expanded field of painting through the lens of motherhood.
Rooted in feminist theory and material exploration, Keehan’s paintings incorporate pink silk drapery painted on reclaimed wood from the historic Hunterian Museum. Veiling, framing, and the idea of the female body as vessel recur throughout her work, where texture and artifice blur boundaries between surface and depth, self and symbol. Looking closely at veiling and artifice, her practice incorporates drapery and framing to create complex structural experiences of real and imaginary spaces. Drapery has a wealth of history relating to painting and these propositions amplify the experience of viewing and understanding.
