Richard Keller (New Rochelle, NY, 1938 – Paris, 1994) was a self-taught artist and a teacher of linguistics and live translation at the Sorbonne. He worked in found-object sculpture, collage, painting, ceramics, and drawing, making work in his Paris apartment for over forty years, prolifically, for himself and for friends, without seeking an exhibition or a market.
Keller died of AIDS in 1994. His partner, who also died of AIDS, kept their apartment and the work intact until his own death in 2013, after which the work was brought from Paris to New York.
Keller worked with the ordinary materials of Paris streets and bourgeois interiors, redirecting them against their intended use, a practice that resonated with Situationist ideas of détournement and the dérive. R.K. Projects, co-founded by his nephew Sam Keller, named the platform after him and adopted that spirit as its method: exploring the city, using buildings in whatever condition it found them, working through the arrangements that made them available, and treating each exhibition as a provisional repurposing of a site.
In 2014 the stewardship of Keller’s work was set apart from the platform as a dedicated initiative. The work is held in New York, where it continues to be conserved, documented, and presented.
Exhibitions
Keller & Keller
Sam Keller & Richard Keller
September 11–27, 2026
Sitting Room Gallery, New York
Lamps, Obelisks, Figurines
May 12–June 26, 2014
39 Bridge Street, Brooklyn
Kunst Promenade / Poppositions
April 18–21, 2013
BRASS / Brasserie Wielmans Ceuppens
Avenue Van Volxem
1190 Forest , Brussels