Contemporary abstract artist Gina Keatley has announced "Motto Motto," a new five-painting acrylic-on-canvas series developed between New York City and Akō, Japan. The series arrives as Keatley completes the ownership transition of Bushwick Gallery and expands Salt Road Studio, an artist-led platform in Akō focused on contemporary art, publishing, international exchange and future residency programming.
The series takes its name from the Japanese word motto, meaning "more." Repeated as motto motto, the phrase becomes both an instruction and a rhythm: a commitment to continue beyond the moment when a painting first appears resolved. The five works—More Depth, More Motion, More Expanse, More Resonance and More Cadence—each measure 48 by 36 inches. Across blush, cream, sand, smoke and pale earth tones, Keatley layers acrylic, scrapes, veils, interrupts and rebuilds the surface. Faint flashes of mandarin orange, introduced through her raindrop technique, bring energy to the quieter palette while darker marks and fragments remain visible beneath.
"Motto Motto is about pushing past the first point where a painting feels finished," Keatley says. "It is about taking more from the process. More time, more movement, more pressure, more room to see what the work can become."
Rather than illustrating Japan, the series treats movement between New York and Akō as a working condition. Distance, atmosphere and cultural experience enter the paintings through process instead of literal imagery. Accumulation, revision and return become the shared structure connecting the five canvases.
That geographic shift is also institutional. After founding and directing Bushwick Gallery in Brooklyn, Keatley is completing the gallery's ownership transition while turning greater attention toward Salt Road Studio. The Akō-based initiative connects her New York practice with the Seto Inland Sea region and is being developed to support contemporary art, artist-led publishing, international exchange and future residency programming.
The result is a body of work that feels weathered and newly made at once: soft in palette, yet insistent in presence. Each painting carries its own cadence while remaining part of a shared visual language built through touch, interruption and persistence. Motto Motto marks a continued refinement of Keatley's abstract practice and a transition toward a broader international framework for her work. The series and press images can be viewed at https://untamedmoderns.com/gina-keatley-motto-motto-series/.
Keatley is a contemporary abstract artist working between New York City and Akō, Japan. Her practice explores place, movement, memory, material tension and what she describes as power through fragility. Her work is characterized by layered surfaces, restrained palettes, gestural interruption and a recurring use of mandarin orange. Keatley is the founder of Salt Road Studio and the founder and former director of Bushwick Gallery. Untamed Moderns is an independent contemporary art platform presenting the work and projects of Gina Keatley. Based in New York with a growing connection to Akō, Japan, it publishes new bodies of work and artist-led initiatives, including Salt Road Studio. More information is available at https://untamedmoderns.com.
The dual-city development of "Motto Motto" matters beyond a single exhibition cycle. It positions Keatley's studio practice within a larger institutional framework that includes publishing, exchange and residency programming—areas where artists often must build their own infrastructure. By completing Bushwick Gallery's ownership transition, Keatley frees capacity to scale Salt Road Studio, potentially creating new pathways for artists moving between the United States and Japan's Seto Inland Sea region. The series itself embodies that ambition: its process-based layering resists a fixed endpoint, mirroring an approach to career and community that values continuation over closure. For audiences, the work offers a model of abstraction that is both deeply personal and structurally international, expanding how cross-cultural experience can be registered without literal depiction.
