Barry McGee has always been a master of contracting and expanding, often in the same show, and even more so on just one painting. Space is key, dense patterns juxtaposed (hey now!) with intentional openess. Colors match and contrast. Faces appear in chaotic bursts of maze-like shapes. Surfboards are leaned against a wall all by themselves, while a giant biomporphic collage that has been his signature for decades grows from a wall like a pulsating heartbeat. It’s graffiti in theory, a sense of disorder while placement is so well-considered. McGee takes that essence of graffiti, the way we place things, they way vandalism’s disorganization has a sense of belonging, and turned it into a particularly bold career.
