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this world of website
by Oshi Yuval
www.oshistyle.com
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Paintings
Outliers and Older Work
Drawings
Paintings
You Had Me At Goodbye
This World of Magic
The Nature Goers
We Win Again
Past is Prologue
Ghosts And Zombies
Hulk Upset
Fear Factor Vs Cops
Living Again In The Past
Stop Me Before I Change
Zombie Ghost Ghoul Vamp Mummy
Hulk Smash
A Handy Reference
Permanent Reserve
Specimens
inventing_the_wheel
Gas
Crosswalk
Lover and Dreamer
Prior to Regret
Jen Kovar
raid
detail fear factor
DETAIL fear factor vs cops
detail hulk upset
detail this world of magic
detail this world of magic
detail we win again
detail past is prologue
DETAIL stop me before i change
Outliers and Older Work
tarry night
two story mcdonalds 12x10 oil on panel 2007
a lot
bug spray
cherry street
map of the known world
map of the known world two
from beyond
scarf and shoes
green counter
halloweeners
detail hallo ween
important phone call
sick day
tripod with cooler
sabine with oven
The Tyrant Who Lived Forever
big fish eat the little fish
the infinite reaches
stereo box
magic motion tv pencil sharpener
1996
Drawings
5 vampire killer
4 vampire
bad cop
torso for a monster
weatherman
two indiffernt angles
we win again
zombie and hulk
walking zombie
fear factor vs. cops
we are very concerned
given a start
ghost over lansing
scientist in a wheelchair
scientist with an idea
self portrait with mullet
scientist with an eyepatch
godzilla
mummy
stop me before i change
living in the past
suspicion
arm fragment
britta in pod
monkey
after sartos disputation over the trinity
wating girl
robot monster 2
walking up closer
broken leg scientist
travelers
annie ghost
ABOUT
About The Work
I think it’s important to feel like anything can happen in a painting. I don’t have a pattern for how I develop a painting or a narrow group of ideas. I have tendencies. I have to get inside a painting and think my way around it for quite a while before I can live with it. I always start with more defined narrative intentions, but I’m usually wrestling with form on the top layer, and with characterization. Characterization isn’t just the evocative quality in the figures. A building or a neighborhood has a characterization. The longest ongoing metaphor in my work is probably the frequent use of signs, barriers, and exaggerated colors of caution and warning. Those cautionary colors are also the candy color of play or visual excitement, suggesting the ambiguous divide between action and violence. Connotative meaning sits on top. My most recent group of paintings began with ideas about how modern technology and science make it easier for people to be superstitious, and broader themes of self image and willful self deception. But what came out of the making process had to do with the ways people fit into and echo their environment, and what the current urban sprawl and strip mall place looks like. In trying to find unique metaphorical figures, I’ve also become more attuned to my personal mythology, to the figures that stand in for certain ideas in my mind that might be evocative for an even smaller societal subset. For instance, the helmet-headed comic character Galactus, eater of worlds, is how I picture a higher power. I draw from an on-canvas cast that includes persons of fleeting modern mythos, friends and acquaintances, and sports star images culled from magazines. I often construct collage spaces from photos and point perspective that are persuasive, but develop zones of confusion. One of the open ended elements in my work is how much source imagery transforms—whether models portray characters or a version of themselves, if found images fit into a 3-D space or they remain photo-type representations, how non-representational mark making can elude to the digital blips and glitches in digital video. I’m interested in competing kinds of illusion and persuasion in painting. I like how the rambling, ensemble cast movies of Robert Altman unfold. He would populate a story with a galaxy of individuals and then let them interact and live in it and add it up. So there are elements of showing and telling, and opposition and dissonance come out of the process organically. I’m not comfortable with the term “realism” because it suggests a singularity or some absolute reality, and makes people take for granted what are nuanced, intimate relationships. The expansion of my paint language in recent years can be seen in part an attempt to deconstruct different kinds of the “real”, and reflect back on the image soup I draw from with disjuncture. Some story ideas have also spun out of that media culture response. I knowingly depict figures with a short shelf-life for wide recognition, or at a tipping point for over exposure. When something becomes blockbuster material, it becomes harder and harder to imbue with meaning. Eight years ago when I started using ghosts and zombies in my work to allude to id and ego/ cerebral and fleshy polarities, I thought of them as a modern mythology that everyone knew the back story to. But now zombies have been so overexposed that they evoke much less. They lack connotative meaning; the zombie zombified. I think it’s often assumed that all of the figures in my work that aren’t the Incredible Hulk are ghosts or zombies. But I also have a perverse interest in how one painting idea can pollute as much as contextualize another.
CV
Robert McCann CV Education2001 MFA in painting--Indiana University1996 BFA in painting--Southwest Missouri State University Academic Appointments2006-present Assistant Professor of Studio Art/ Foundations Coordinator, Michigan State University Department of Art & Art History, East Lansing, MI2004-2005 Lecturer in Art, Washington University School of Design & Visual Arts, St. Louis, MO2002-2004 Adjunct Faculty, Missouri State University Department of Art & Design, Springfield, MO2000-2001 Assistant Instructor, Indiana University School of Fine ArtsSolo and Small Group Exhibitions2012 Solo Exhibition, gallerywest, Toronto, ON (Scheduled fall)The Lie That Reveals The Truth, Solo Exhibition, Schmidt Art Center, Belleville, IL (Scheduled spring)2011 Subtext Sprawl, Solo Exhibition, Art & Design Gallery, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. (Scheduled August)Strip Malls, Superstores, and the American Landscape, Two Person Exhibition, Parkland Art Gallery, Parkland College, Champaign, IL (Scheduled June) You Had Me at Goodbye, at Soo Visual Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.Person, Place, or Thing, solo at Mott Community College Fine Arts Gallery, Flint, MI.2010 The Tipping Point, at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum, Ormond Beach, FL Robert McCann: Paintings at The Little Gallery at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University, Huron, OH Allegories…, at Artbox, Indianapolis, IN 2009 Dramatis Personae, 4 person exhibition at Buckham Gallery, Flint, MI 2008 Putting Some Feelers Out, at University Gallery, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, MI Unseen and Undead, 4 person exhibition, Gallery 621, Tallahassee, FL Figurative Fictions 3 person exhibition, Dayton Visual Art Center, Dayton, OH(curated by Joe Houston, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH)2005 The Best Intentions, PEO Foundation Gallery, Cottey College, Nevada, MO Robert McCann, at Art & Design Lower Gallery, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO Selected Group Exhibitions2010 Image Attitude Impression, at Union Street Gallery (Chicago Heights, IL)Americas 2010: Paperworks, at the Northwest Art Center, Minot State University (Minot, ND, Jan. 11- Feb. 24, 2010)2009 Mythography: An Exploration of Narrative, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OHDrawing From Perception VI, Wright State University, Dayton, OH2008 Faculty Biennial, Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI Fifth Annual Michigan Invitational: A Selection of Recent Paintings By Michigan College & University Faculty, Saginaw Art Museum, Saginaw, MI Biennial: Contemporary American Realism, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN Peopled Paintings, George Caleb Bingham Gallery, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 3rd Annual Juried Art Show, Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN Great Lakes Drawing Biennial, University Gallery, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI Interpretations of the Figure, University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN Chautauqua Lecture Series “Space, Place, Life“, Giles Gallery, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY 2007 47th Greater Michigan Art Exhibition, Alden B Dow Museum, Midland, MI Halpert Biennial, Turchin Art Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC Auction Preview for Twilight in The Garden, Kresge Art Museum, MSU, E. Lansing, MI Drawing From Perception and Imagination, Gallery 115, Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, MO 2006 Studio Art Faculty Biennial, Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 2005 Salon Show, Space B, New York, NY Open Space, Art Saint Louis, St. Louis, MO Eight the Hard Way, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2004 Faculty Show, Kemper Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 2003 Rosenthal International, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, NC Summer Show, Keyes Gallery, Springfield, MO 2002 Offene Ateliers/Open Studios 6 person exhibition and open studios event, Fuerbringer 9, Berlin, Germany Selected Awards2007 Second Prize, Direct Art Magazine, Slow Art Productions, Hudson, NY2003 Merit Award, Rosenthal International, Rosenthal Gallery, Fayetteville State University (Fayetteville, NC, Fall 2003).2001 FULBRIGHT AWARD, Full Maintenance Category, Berlin, Germany, 2001-2002; affiliated with the Universitat der Kunst 2001 Charles Lanham Traveling Fellowship, Indiana University, Florence Italy Program
Contact
robertmccann72_gmail.com
Groove N Space
ROBERT MCCANN
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