2015.44.A-D William McKeown, The Dayroom

Dayrooms are familiar to us as communal spaces in institutions such as hospitals or convalescent homes. There is often an attempt at decorating these spaces, aiming to make them more homelike, and yet they are never quite comfortable. Within a hospital the dayroom may be the space where the patient awaits news: perhaps good, perhaps bad, potentially devastating. For his installation The Dayroom, McKeown has constructed a simple cubic room. From the outside the room is exposed for what it is: a rough framework of wooden struts and drywall. Inside, the room is plastered to a smooth finish and then painted in a heritage yellow called “Dayroom Yellow.” There is an insincerity to the sophistication of the room, amplified by the sickly yellow of the walls and the sterile light emitted by the double fluorescent tubes overhead. The room sits between elegance and artifice. Inside the room are hung a color pencil drawing and a painting, specifically of a single primrose and an expanse of sky. These offer glimpses of a potential outside that can be imagined by the viewer. They are metaphorical windows which stand in lucid contrast to the actual door and window of the room, which serve to remind the viewer of the illusion in which they are involved.

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