Brian and I worked together in the early days at SITE Santa Fe. He was the SITE Santa Fe Webmaster. I was the head of Exhibitions Administration.

We kept in touch and by 2006 Brian had been involved in the artistic collective Keep Adding for a few years. He and his collaborator Noah MacDonald  had an exhibition project they wanted to develop. I got very interested in what they were proposing and spent months working with Brian and Noah of Keep Adding to curate their exhibition entitled WREKAGE at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe.

The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, featured the work of the Santa Fe based artists collective Keep Adding in an exhibition entitled WREKAGE, curated by Craig Anderson in 2006-07. In addition to the exhibition, a catalogue and accompanying DVD documented their major installation in two galleries at CCA, from September 23rd, 2006 into February 2007.

 Keep Adding's computer-based work and hybrid installations were visually strong, impeccably designed and often explored new ways of working in a non-conventional collaborative atmosphere with progressive computer programmers, video artists and contemporary sound designers.

Keep Adding’s work from that time was quintessentially youthful and contemporary. Eluding convention, they defined their own artistic vocabulary. Their work sprung from broad contemporary cultural contexts, but perhaps least of all, from art history. They were much more interested in “art future”.

At a superficial glance an uneducated eye might have mistaken the work for a stylized reflection of graffiti common to urban street culture. But their work went far beyond graffiti, emerging from a deeply orchestrated sense of artistic presence, exuding a visionary, poetic formalism far from pedestrian forms of graffiti.

Their ingenious approach to working at that time was a completely collaborative and improvisational process launched from a foundation of long time friendships, trust and experience. Like Jazz, their projects often emerged from an interlinked pool of existential thoughts. Their working premise revealed a rich source of contemporary contexts, including a strong influence from new music of that time, as well as a working knowledge of apropos science and technology.

Keep Adding also displayed a distinctive awareness of the early history of an international public “writing” scene, clearly differentiated from "Graffiti". In 2006-2007, a period of history that is now remembered for its wars, cultural anxiety, frustrations and political numbness, Keep Adding presented a dynamic counterpoint. They exuded an artistic tension, built on strategy, patience and balance, but pulsing with spontaneous energy, leaving exhibition viewers with an immersion in another place and an edgy sense of being on the other side.

Craig Anderson, Curator

 

Brian and Noah, the principals of Keep Adding went on to form Early Departure a graphic design team. Subsequently Brian moved to Germany to pursue an advanced visual arts degree.

The digital images presented here are classic Brian Bixby. Built on the refinement of vision, ultra contemporary in tone and beautiful from the standpoint of being "stretched representations" of well-known flowers, with "pushed" colors and drifting forms thrusting them into another realm; botanical but ethereal.