Steve KEENE: RAUSCHENBERG 100 – A Centennial Celebration

August 25 – December 6, 2025

Bob Rauschenberg Gallery ANNEX

8099 College Parkway (Bldg. J/Library-Lobby-Room 118), Fort Myers, Florida 33919

No opening reception, but related events to be announced as scheduled.

Free and Open to the Public.

Gallery Hours: Monday-Saturday 10am-4pm (except holidays)

Florida Southwestern State College is proud to present Steve KEENE: RAUSCHENBERG 100 – A Centennial Celebration – a newly commissioned, site-specific installation of 100 paintings in honor and celebration of the 100^th birthday of (our namesake) Robert Rauschenberg at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery Annex by the “World’s Most Prolific Painter.”  Also, dubbed the “Assembly-Line Picasso” by TIME magazine (when his work was featured in 1997) and having created more than 350,000 unique paintings over the last four decades, Steve Keene (born 1957) is a Yale University-educated, Brooklyn-based artist who believes in “mass-producing” hand-painted artworks for the masses.

Like his exhibition “The Miracle Half-Mile” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2000 (where Keene completed more than 10,000 pictures over the two-month run of the show), the internationally-acclaimed painter worked on-site at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery for two-weeks in 2018 to create his monumental 62-panel (8 x 248 ft. long) The 57 Miles or 455 Furlong Piece – taking inspiration from Rauschenberg’s self-contained retrospective The ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (which was world-premiered in three-sections at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery from 1983-86).

Famous among indie-rock fans for designing album covers for bands including Pavement and The Apples in Stereo, Steve Keene has painted instruments, video and concert stage sets, as well as promotional and tour posters for the likes of Soul Coughing, Merzbow, The Klezmatics and the Dave Matthews Band, and has had his paintings collected by REM’s Michael Stipe, DEVO and Cat Power.  In addition to features on National Public Radio and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Filter and Spin Magazines, the artist has had major solo exhibitions at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, Rice University in Houston, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, and the Czech Centre in London. 

Sourcing countless “found” photographs/images of Rauschenberg himself, his seminal/iconic artworks (including “Monogram”, “Buffalo II” and others) and his Captiva Island studio/compound, Steve Keene has created this centenary celebration as an ambitious and immersive exhibition of 100 newly-created paintings that capture both the Art and Life of our Bob Rauschenberg Gallery namesake in advance (and during) his October 22^nd, 2025 100^th birthday.