ROBERT A. MCCANN
Status Pending
Returning for his second solo show at Amos Eno Gallery, Robert A. McCann traverses media, memory and fantasy in Status Pending, on view August 29 through September 22. At the forefront of the exhibition are fragmented frames of reference addressing both our personal and public persona, and how we face an overarching sense of “uneasiness” about the omnipresent effect that technology has on both.
“It was not a single concept that began this work, but as I started to put these [paintings] together certain things seemed
to tie everything together,” McCann says. “One of these things was this idea of this staging of events or this connection to fame or the technological screen.”
At first look the paintings are familiar, yet convoluted, as is the artist’s intention. “It’s not so much a statement or a critique on technology,” he explains, “but making use of pop culture characters—or even real people that we know through the media—and trying to find a way of connecting them into stories that feel like how we read these multiple layers of content when we read magazines or articles or watch TV. I think that it’s important for a painting to have multiple readings.”
Take Red Becoming Green Becoming Red, for example. On first read, the oil depicts a group of men with blurred faces playing golf. But, as McCann explains, multiple connections can be pulled from the work.
“It started from this notion of wanting to paint these kind of ’70s era, heavy metal guys,” he says.
While it’s not blatantly obvious, if you take a closer look at the work, you can see that the golfers are Alice Cooper, Ozzy
Osbourne, Gene Simmons and Iron Maiden’s drummer, Nicko McBrain.
“I can’t make them completely recognizable because maybe that sort of specificity doesn’t work anymore,” shares McCann. “The reference is never completely direct in that way.”
A metalhead himself, McCann notes that while the scenario didn’t actually happen, “It’s something that seems like it almost sort of happened. They are all golfers, except for Ozzy.” He adds, “It’s sort of like I’m announcing my own middle age—these guys become old men while I become middle-aged.”
Like other works in the series, Red Becoming Green Becoming Red is stitched together from various sources.
“What has changed in this group in particular is that I did more work on the front end with these and used more visual references to shape what I wanted the paintings to become,” McCann explains. “I wanted to make these strange images that I was trying to make already feel very real to me with the digital collages I was constructing them from. I think that these paintings can be tied directly to the kinds of things that people share on Facebook.”