PRISM

PRISM is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Barry McGee. In his second exhibition at the gallery, McGee integrates his visual language, with its striking geometric compositions, color fields and recurring characters into a site-responsive installation that converts the gallery into a dynamic and vibrant space. Viewers are immersed in purposeful chaos reflected in McGee’s drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs.

McGee has always been compelled towards mark-making; imprinting his sensibility on available surfaces from thin sheets of luan to the urban architecture that surrounds him. His practice has developed to invite these influences into the sphere of exhibition making and for the last two decades McGee has held an indelible place in contemporary art. He works on a prodigious scale and his work points to the perpetually renewed and decaying landscape of art, advertising and the highly graphic.

Barry McGee was born in San Francisco in 1966. He studied painting and printmaking and graduated with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991. The Berkeley Art Museum will present a comprehensive retrospective of McGee's work in August of 2012. This retrospective follows solo exhibitions with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2008); Redcat, Los Angeles, USA (2007); The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (2007); John Kaldor Art Projects, Australia (2004); Prada Foundation, Milan, Italy (2002): UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USE (2000); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (1998). He has participated in major exhibitions, including the Lyon Biennale, France (2009); Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegies International, Pittsburgh, USA (2006); Mediations In An Emergency, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Michigan, USA (2006); The Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool (2002); Drawing Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2002), and the 49th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2001).