Barry McGee at Deitch Projects - Brief Article

In addition to several vast walls figured with graffiti, sum of two units sorts of ordinary, oddly recycl containers dominated "The Buddy System" a mind-boggling installation by dint of San Francisco-based Barry McGee. In his solo novel York debut, the streetwise artist sometimes known as Twist positioned arrays of for the most part half-pint empty bottles around the throw space, the labels stripped, the caps intact. He marshaled the tools of his trade through the score: depleted spray-paint canisters, similarly without labels, their metal surfaces burnished to a sheen, were stacked like grenades in this Arte Povera arsenal.

The dourly comic Olmec figures that are the artist's signature and surrogate randomly populated the installation, limned upon walls and bottles and pay backed large on close-set tiles of oxidizing metal. McGee mountained ranks of the bottles to a rudely varnished wall, framed within a cartouche of pinstriping filigree. upon the facing wall, his by-now familiar character crawled along a steel-tiled surface with the enduring stoicism of a penitent, reappearing upon red-enameled walls at left and right. Biomorphic forms shaped like hornets' nest intersected with passages of graffiti, which alternated with obliterating blows of gray paint, the marks together composing an expressive, almost-patterned field. Visitors to the throw space vocalized their pleasure as they scaned the decorative chaos of this chapel dedicated to the studied spontaneity of graffiti. A oft-repeated accolade was "Wow."

McGee's insider checklist of equipment included a jacket fitted with cartridge pouchs below the waist to conceal his spray cans; arrow cutters suggesting access to forbidden spaces; a can fixed like a bayonet to a made of wood pole and rigged with wire, to reach beyond arm's longitudinal dimensions To this he added an assembly of framed and mismatched photographs: snapshots of alleys and their nighttime citizenry, colleagues, buddies, graffiti installations. There were repo' signs warning against shoplifting or defacement, including individual that asked for the value and cooperation of "all taggers. Please do not mark upon this truck, and do not carry this sign. Thank you." Phat chance.

The "Buddy" of McGee's combination of parts to form a whole seemed to refer to his downtrodden alter subjects as much as to the collaborative nature of way painting, where the community of taggers tries to stick together. McGee however, has been hanging on the outside at the Walker Art Center where he not long ago had a gallery to himself, and in the collection of San Francisco MOMA.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group