• AFH
  • 4Dimensions
  • News
  • AFH Projects
  • About Paul McLean
    • Generic Bio
    • DIM TIM: Fallacies of Hope
    • Reel
    • Sample Text: On Concentricity [Brooklyn Rail]
    • Studio
    • NMNF Blog
  • Contact
Art for Humans

[Paul McLean]

  • AFH
  • 4Dimensions
  • News
  • AFH Projects
  • About Paul McLean
    • Generic Bio
    • DIM TIM: Fallacies of Hope
    • Reel
    • Sample Text: On Concentricity [Brooklyn Rail]
    • Studio
    • NMNF Blog
  • Contact

AFH UPDATE [September 2014]

["Autoportrait (Glencoe, 1995)"] Acrylic and ink on canvas, from the series, "Where my Feet Stick to the Ground"

["Autoportrait (Glencoe, 1995)"] Acrylic and ink on canvas, from the series, "Where my Feet Stick to the Ground"

If Scotland votes YES to independence from England, I'll be applying for citizenship as soon as possible and moving there. Saor Alba.

Since the DLGN show, I have been writing a book. Actually, the story kernel is something penned for "Code Duello, Old Hick + A Big Bang." It's a cyberpunk-/Rob't E. Howard-inspired, novadic, asymmetrical preface to my doctoral paper, which I'll be starting to compose soon [more on that in a bit]. The first two chapters of Urbane Savage are the fall entry for the 4Dimensions Blog.

DIM TIM is running as a write-in candidate in all USA elections. I'm considering performance material in support. Stay tuned.

I've settled on the subject of the EGS dissertation. After many, many shunts and feints, the winner is the Matterhorn Project. That was a big, long circle or spiral, to get back to where this project started.

[Pattern]M-horn, digital file + output print, exhibited in 2010 at ANDLAB with Gramatica Parda collective. 

[Pattern]M-horn, digital file + output print, exhibited in 2010 at ANDLAB with Gramatica Parda collective. 

tags: Paul McLean, EGS, Scotland, Novel, Matterhorn
categories: update
Sunday 09.14.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

Nice Press for Last Month's Expo at DLG-N + Art Talk Synopsis

Screengrab of Burnaway mini-review for "Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang"

Screengrab of Burnaway mini-review for "Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang"

Check out other articles & press for the show at the 4dpop's links page HERE - including this nice one by MiChelle Jones for the Tennessean.

Last Saturday's gallery talk (7-26) for the closing was good times. Folks from the Hermitage dropped by beforehand, plus old Nashville photog-artsy pal Mark Tucker - now in LA - & gallery artist Mary Hackett, Noteables' Scott Davis & a few others mostly listened patiently while I spent a half hour listing what I've been up to, since leaving the Music City in the early 00s, asked a few rhetorical questions about art & artists (1a & 1b = what is art/what is it for? 2b = who's an artist?), made a brief intro to 4D art, etc. Thanks to Dane & David & the DLG staff for the opportunity & support!

tags: David Lusk Gallery, Paul McLean, old hickory
categories: press, art talk
Thursday 07.31.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

Rockin' Old Hick Song + Animation Remix

Something fun I did for the web expo component for my David Lusk Gallery Nashville show over the weekend. Plus, check out the "Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang" makeover at 4D Pop!

tags: song, video, animation, Andrew Jackson, Paul McLean
categories: animation, exhibitions
Sunday 07.20.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang

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A lovely installation curated by Dane Carder and David Lusk. The exhibition also features the animation "A Big Bang," which is projected onto the rear of the transition wall separating the main and second galleries. The opening was excellent and well-attended, coinciding with Wedgewood art district First Saturday Art Crawl (and the 4th of July weekend). The event featured a mixologist, who researched a special concoction related to Old Hickory. I hope to post some photos from the evening here soon. 

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tags: Paul McLean, David Lusk Gallery, dane carder
categories: exhibitions
Friday 07.18.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

"Code Duello, Old Hick & a Big Bang" opens at DLG Nashville

Click the image to visit the DLG website.

Click the image to visit the DLG website.

In his first solo exhibition in Nashville in over a decade, on view at David Lusk Gallery from July 5 through July 26, Brooklyn-based artist Paul McLean will present a rich body of new paintings and supporting media focused on the life and times of President Andrew Jackson ("Old Hickory"), and other stories from the past, here and now. For “Code Duello, Old Hick & A Big Bang,” McLean will exhibit interlinking series of mixed media on canvas, sculptural or dimensional wall-mounted pieces and ink-on-polyester works, plus digital animations and texts. The show’s subject matter will cover a spectrum of compelling narratives, including President Jackson’s colorful and controversial history, the practice of dueling in America and the art and science of the universe’s origins, as represented in modern technology through computer-enabled data visualization. "Code Duello, Old Hick & A Big Bang" opens Saturday July 5, with an artist's reception from 6-9PM

Bazooka Joe Pink Old Hick / 55" x 50" / Acrylic and Ink on Canvas / 2014

Bazooka Joe Pink Old Hick / 55" x 50" / Acrylic and Ink on Canvas / 2014

McLean’s unique approach, which he has termed “4D,” or “4th Dimensional art” since the early 80s, provides an integrative framework for layered techniques, timelines, spatial concerns and concepts. Most of the images in “Code Duello, Old Hick & A Big Bang” consist of the figure on and/or in abstraction, but operate as a kind of perceptual projection device confronting space and time beyond the limits of strict 3D and 2D pictorial architectures. Throughout his career, McLean has created art in both solo and collective platforms, and in this exhibition, the artist partners with long-time collaborator Shane Kennedy, a Tennessee native and recent graduate of The Cooper Union. McLean and Kennedy created a series of innovative pull-paintings during a residency at Chanorth in upstate New York in Fall 2013, as part of the “Code Duello” set. Kennedy also prepared lush surfaces for some of the paintings for the Jackson series, and provided substantial technical support for McLean’s project. Additional fabrication services for “Code Duello, Old Hick & A Big Bang” came by way of the robust and bustling artisanal networks in Brooklyn, especially the Bushwick district, where McLean’s current studio is located. McLean’s impetus for weaving the Big Bang into the discourse underpinning the show arose from his doctoral course work at the European Graduate School, and an encounter with NYU’s Tim Maudlin, whose specialty is combining physics and philosophy in exploring the nature of relations to the cosmos. 

"Wallpaper" / 10" x 8" / Acrylic and Ink on Panel / 2014

"Wallpaper" / 10" x 8" / Acrylic and Ink on Panel / 2014

Ultimately, “Code Duello, Old Hick & A Big Bang” is an exposition on questions we have about what it means to be “A Man of the Times,” how we stylize our experiences for the purposes of representation, and what we consider to be meaningful action. It is McLean’s general contention that the arts - and especially visual art - give us a worthy vehicle for sharing our most profound encounters with the complex world in which we live out our lives. The artist has the means to combine craft with theory to generate singular objects that simultaneously reflect and embody our perceptions of existence and what we value most. As a valuable expression the art thus conceived can be passed down, generation to generation, as an act of hope - a “real” reminder of, meditation on, and hedge against our individual mortality.

"Untitled" / Ink on Polyester / 2014

"Untitled" / Ink on Polyester / 2014

tags: Paul McLean, David Lusk Gallery
categories: exhibitions
Tuesday 07.01.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

New paintings [Old Hick + A Big Bang]

Pre-vite for DLG-N Expo [PJM]

Pre-vite for DLG-N Expo [PJM]

The new series of paintings is taking shape. Most of the latest ones extend the Code Duello collaborative approach that Shane & I brought to the ink-on-polyester works executed last fall at chanorth to acrylic+ (e.g., inks, varnishes, other materials) on canvas. Very rarely have I attempted to systematically paint on canvas with another artist [only twice before, over a 30+ -year span] operating collaboratively. Which isn't to say I haven't co-opted other painter's canvases and re-appropriated them before. I have. Nearly my entire undergrad senior show at Notre Dame was executed on a trove of pre-stretched canvases some guy had left in my apartment complex's storage area! My creative relationship with Shane is unique though, due to the long-term shared studio proximity, access, 4D discourse, actualization and production - which makes this undertaking feasible. He's aware of what will and won't work in the toggling process. Shane delivered a half dozen canvases he'd additively texturized/dimensionally underpainted [beautifully] during course studies at Cooper, and I began overworking them. Shane's excellent usage of Guerra pigments contributes a lot to the ease of integrating his prep-elements with the subsequent layers. I won't go much more here into detail describing the exchange process, but I will present in the journal some photo-documentation of the development of these pieces, minus commentary, at least for the time being. (I likely will present a talk on this at DLG-Nashville in July.)

Suffice to say, Shane & I have already begun to discuss consequent steps, continuing the project. Exciting!

As for the 4D painting approach I'm employing: The Old Hick series seems to be emerging from a specific painting [see "Kittler" in the Dim Tim series]; but it also revives a way of building images that I practiced in the late 80s. ...Lots of push-pull, over-under, tricky color, perspective-play and so on, using perspectival and perceptual expectations to activate complex surfaces. I'm thinking in particular of a big body of work that I produced while inhabiting one of those awesome artist studios in Gypsy Alley, off Canyon Road in Santa Fe. I don't think I have any chronicle of those paintings at all, which is a bummer. There were many of them, but I have no idea where they are now. It's a very strange feeling. Anyway, the mash-up of simple composition (informed maybe by a media philosophy of concision, if not precision) with "drametric" effects is in itself new territory to move through. 

[Click the image to view the non-chronological sequence. The pictures aren't edited in any way.]

Duelling pistol (in process)

Duelling pistol (in process)

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tags: shane kennedy, old hickory, paintings, Paul McLean
categories: collaboration
Monday 05.05.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

BOS2014 Benefit

Screengrab of BOS2014 Benefit Tumblr.

Screengrab of BOS2014 Benefit Tumblr.

The Arts in Bushwick/Bushwick Open Studios 2014 Benefit Tumblr is online now. What an impressive array of contributions. Again, I say this annual collective project is the best of its kind anywhere. Featuring the art of 193 Bushwick-based artists, the benefit will generate funds for BOS2014 through a raffle that only costs $80 per ticket. The organizers admit it's a paltry amount, but say the raffle fare is priced low, so artists can afford to purchase the tickets. Here's more info: 

ABOUT the Benefit
 
Please come to see it and have fun on May 4th at Storefront Ten Eyck:

Storefront Ten Eyck 324 Ten Eyck St, Brooklyn NY 11206. 6-9PM
 
All the artists are invited and you are very welcome to bring friends and family, it is all open the public but we are going to have a donation suggestion of $5.00 for the non-artists.
 
The benefit is going to be by raffle at $80.00 per ticket (we know it's not a lot but we want make sure artists are able to purchase art).
 

If you'd like to have more info about the benefit go to:
 
http://artsinbushwick.org/bos2014/benefit-2014/

2014 BOS Benefit Committee:

  • Jessica Hargreaves
  • Christopher Stout
  • Jennifer Hitchings
  • Taylor Langone
  • Cibele Vieira
  • Sessa Englund
tags: Bushwick Open Studios, benefit, Paul McLean
categories: fundraiser, bushwick, community, artists
Tuesday 04.22.14
Posted by Paul McLean
 

David Lusk Gallery opens space in Nashville

My longtime friend Dane Carder will be directing a new gallery owned by Memphis-based gallerist David Lusk in Nashville. A private opening will be held February 22, and a public opening will launch the beautiful exhibit space on March 1. I'll be showing recent and new work with DSL in 2014. Below is the press release (click-through, to see all 3 pages), and an image of the gallery, in progress.

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Note from Dane: "floors won't be quite so shiny... getting closer."

Note from Dane: "floors won't be quite so shiny... getting closer."

tags: Paul McLean, David Lusk Gallery, Nashville, dane carder
categories: exhibitions
Monday 02.10.14
Posted by Paul McLean