The Future of Heads by Mark Keffer attempts to capture the mind visually

Lifetimes are spent trying to tackle and pin down the constant state of flux of the human mind. Even pros like Freud, Jung, and Dr. Phil have grasped only morsels. The task is arguably impossible. But painter Mark Keffer accepts the challenge in his show “The Future of Heads” at Pravus Gallery in downtown Phoenix.

This endeavor — trying to capture the mind in a visual way — offers infinite avenues to explore. But just because the possibilities are endless, that doesn’t mean anything goes. Instead of slapping crazy bits of randomness on the canvas, Keffer relies on his own visual language of silhouettes against stark backgrounds.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t blown away at first glance. The paintings are attractive, filled with relatively simple shapes and a very nice sense of color. But the compelling title made me pause, and I began to see greater depth in each work.

In Present-day Head, Keffer paints a portrait of today’s mind. This head is putrid green, riddled with yellow amoeba-like shapes. There are holes — blobs festering and rotting the brain from the inside out. Through the decaying windows, you can see the background. It’s straightforward with horizontal stripes of russet brown and black. The color is splotchy and irregular. Turns out, it’s dried blood.

This head looks as if it’s deteriorating on a cellular level. The shapes are cancerous, like lesions on rancid flesh. Against a bloody background, it could be that Keffer sees our present-day minds as matter, as meat in the midst of death and decay. This mind is certainly human. It’s plagued by vulnerability.

Using such minimal visual elements to undertake an intensely complicated subject creates strain. This explanation makes sense to me, but it’s the unstable subject matter that torments me. I can’t settle on one interpretation. Maybe the blood doesn’t mean death — it could indicate pulsating life. Perhaps the focus on our physical defenselessness is a celebration of our current state of humanness. Keffer could view corrosion as a beautiful thing. And after looking at this work, I certainly do.

Line Up shows four heads peering toward a surrealistic skyscape. He uses almost every shade of blue in small, horizontal scratches to depict this gorgeous sky. A creamy, perfectly circular moon shines high above the heads. And a light bulb hangs from the top edge of the painting. It is jet black. The heads are mere silhouettes, connected at the shoulders and covered in thick, horizontal alternating stripes of honeydew, black, pink and white. The stripes are strong, sterile, and have a mass-produced quality. There’s nothing fleshy or vulnerable here. Odd-shaped appendages jut out from the heads. Most of the contours are indecipherable. They could be antlers or branches, ears or lips. But others are the unmistakable silhouettes of protruding penises. With that in mind, perhaps those “ears” are really vaginas.

Because it isn’t titled as a present-day head, it’s most likely from the future. The odd shape may indicate millennia of changes within the mind. They have antlers because their thoughts desperately strive toward the heavens to understand outer space, the cosmos, or God. After all, those heads seem to be more interested in the moon than the defunct light bulb. As for the genitalia? It could be evolution working on all cylinders. With mind games being such a turn-on, it sort of makes sense to move those things closer to their stimulus, right?

But the more I look at it, the more possibilities arise. Maybe I’m just a bit of a perv and I’m completely off base with this evolutionary travel of our unmentionables. Perhaps the antlers are a mere nod to evolution’s tendency toward seemingly random quirks. I can see these works from so many different angles; it’s difficult to settle on one meaning.

The mental exercise itself brilliantly complements the subject matter. This bout between competing impartial trains of thought, constantly backtracking and restarting is all an attempt to pin down fully formulated meanings. The struggle is in vain. Like defining the mind, it’s an impossible task. Keffer, clever man that he is, embraces a format of exploration without discovery. He’s humble enough to know he’s not going to find any answers. So his paintings present ideas that are just out of reach. That, in and of itself, is a pretty accurate portrait of the mind, I say.

With that, er, in mind, Glade is, by far, my favorite work because it is the one that initially confused me the most. The figures barely resemble anything human. The “necks” are elongated and wispy. The “heads” look like airy, floating clouds. They’re the missing link between brain and thought bubble. Most are covered in the same linear, sterile stripes seen in other heads — except for one. The central figure is dark like a shadow. A jumbled set of black teeth floats in its headspace.

The “heads” are so dismantled, so far removed from humanity, that I can barely relate to them. They’re the most evolved of the bunch and they exist in a world where cerebral energy has become strong enough to break down its physical encasement. What’s left is ethereal collections of loose atoms, propelled by the power of thought, hardly recognizable as individuals. Add a few centuries and those remaining teeth will be gone, too. Chilling.

These interpretations, cooked up in my own peculiar mind, are just one way of seeing these complex works. And don’t expect them to give you any straight answers, either. Is it aggravating? Sure. But is it accurate? Totally.