MAGNIFICENT MIX MASTER: RYAN MCGINNESS
RYAN MCGINNESS
Pop, Baroque, commercial, and street art layer and fuse in a magnificent mix of color and shape in the works of Ryan McGinness.
Psychedelic and surreal, the imagery is a heady amalgam of logos, symbols, typographic abstractions, decals, and signage, with roots in the surf and skate culture of Virginia Beach, where McGinness was born and raised. He creates his own iconographic language as a multi-faceted vignette of contemporary visual culture.
Trained as a graphic artist, as an Andrew Carnegie Scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, McGinness transfers the cornucopia of images and techniques of commercial illustration into slick silkscreened paintings. “My paintings are composed of many units of meaning,” he says. “Individual drawings come together to create non-linear narrative mindscapes—random access memories.”
While still in school, McGinness interned as a curatorial assistant at the Andy Warhol Museum, where he further developed an appreciation for Pop Art and graphic design. He favors hard edges and vibrant neon colors. “When I look inward, those are the colors I see,” he muses. The works are at once boldly graphic and graceful.
McGinness has extended his vision and aesthetic across a range of mediums, including sculptures, projections, and immersive installations of fluorescent light, as he expands upon the communication of personal meaning. While his works are large, they convey an intimate meditation.
“Nothing inherently has meaning,” he says. “Meaning is projected and reflected which gives the illusion that things ‘have’ meaning. In that sense, meaning is like color.”
McGinness’ work is characterized by its uniform smoothness and mechanical application of color, with his kaleidoscopic patterns lending flat interpretations of texture. His ultra-smooth surfaces are embellished through veneers of spray paint and silk-screen.
The stylized motifs, calligraphic patterns, and abstracted tattoo-like insignia overlap to evoke trippy arabesque mandalas and ancient tapestries. In a sense, McGinness works reconstitute beauty and spirituality in a high tech world.
Check out the artist’s most recent book, “Ryan McGinness: #metadata,” by Dieter Buchhart, Andrew Blauvelt, Ben Sutton , Carlo McCormick, Bill Powers, & Ryan McGinness, published by Damiani.
The book features new paintings inspired by and referenced from McGinness own studio space, including tools, sketches, paint containers and finished paintings. The book also features interviews with the artist, a selection of early works, and installation views of McGinness’ work on view at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and the Cranbrook Art Museum.
“A Warholian mix of pop iconography and silk-screening.” ―The New York Times
You can view McGinness work in the permanent public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as at the Kohn Gallery, among others.
Read more about Magnificent Mix all this week on BeautifulNow. See Marvelous Mixed-up Landscape, Chartreuse: A Magical Mix, Mushrooms are Saving Bees & Us!, and check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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