Ryan McGinness, French Kiss Series 10 (2009) All images via Country Club
Ryan McGinness is currently showing at Country Club in Los Angeles, where over 50 of the McGinness’s works on paper, including woodblock monoprints, lithographs, silkscreens, and drawings in cyanotype, are on view. ‘Works on Paper’ is the most extensive assembly of McGinness’s work on paper to ever be exhibited, and will be open through July 2nd.
More images and text after the jump…
Ryan McGinness, Chain Reaction 1 (2006)
Ryan McGinness, Untitled (Army Men Camouflage) series (2007)
The works are hung salon-style throughout the gallery, making for a vividly colorful and bright display. McGinness is best known for graphic, vibrant works and silkscreens influenced by advertising design, which have earned numerous comparisons with Andy Warhol (the series Untitled (Army Men Camouflage) owes an obvious debt to Warhol’s own colorful camouflage works). McGinness frequently takes urban signage or symbols and deconstructs them into their most graphic, sometimes cartoon-like forms, but these deconstructions do not always have simplistic results; instead McGinness often creates highly intricate and elaborate configurations, such as his French Kiss series and cyanotype drawings, which feature a complex layering and interplay of forms and figures.
Ryan McGinness, Black Hole 1 (2006)
Ryan McGinness, Untitled (VMFA Cyanotype #10) (2010)
Prominently featured in this show are cyanotypes- made through a printing process which produced a cyan-blue color. Used primarily by engineers in the 20th century, the medium is here co-opted by McGinness in pieces originally commissioned by The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that blend religious icons, ancient symbols, and contemporary graphics. Each work is composed of small individual images that together become a cohesive whole. An Eastern influence, in particular Hindu iconography, is particularly conspicuous.
Ryan McGinness, Untitled (Ice Cream Trees, 7) (2007)
Ryan McGinness, Unite or Die (2006)
Country Club was also involved with the McGinness’s project, ‘Women: The Blacklight Paintings’, which took place at The Standard, Hollywood from May 28 to June 11. The hotel’s Purple Lounge featured recent blacklight paintings of nude female figures, which had a Matisse-ian appearance with their reductive forms and curvaceous lines. The two dimensional painted figures were juxtaposed with live women who danced on stripper poles while bedecked in tiny pink thongs and fluorescent body-paint. It was the third iteration of a project that first debuted at a Miami strip club during Art Basel in December and later took place at The Standard in New York City. The Los Angeles event also marked the launch of the Blacknight Nudie Cards, a glow-in-the-dark deck of cards featuring the reduced, iconic looking nude women drawn in fluorescent ink.
Ryan McGinness, French Kiss Series 6 (2006)
– S. Zabrodski
Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Country Club]
Artist’s Page [Ryan McGinness]
McGinness, Spawn of Warhol, Brings His Naked Ambition to L.A. [LA Weekly]
Ryan McGinness deals full deck of shows, also parties and nudie cards, for one month in L.A. [Los Angeles Times]
The Graphic Mind of Ryan McGinness [The Wall Street Journal]
