HEATHER MCGILL
Invisible Bloom
May 21 - June 24, 2022
Opening Artist Reception: Wednesday, May 21, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 PM
CHELSEA LOCATION
508 WEST 26TH STREET, SUITE 9E, NEW YORK, NY 10001 | P (212) 882-1705
David Richard Gallery, LLC
508 West 26th Street, Suite 9E | New York, NY 10001
P: (212) 882-1705
www.davidrichardgallery.com
NOTE: The number of people in the gallery at any one time will be limited for safety purposes due to the pandemic and face coverings are required for entry and at all times
Private viewings are available by appointment, please call or email the gallery to schedule.
David Richard Gallery is pleased to debut Heather McGill’s newest body of artwork in the presentation, Invisible Bloom, her second solo with the Gallery. The exhibition will be on view from May 21 through June 24, 2022, at David Richard Gallery located in Chelsea at 508 West 26 ST Suite 9E, New York, NY 10001, Phone: 212-882-1705, email: info@DavidRichardGallery.com and website: DavidRichardGallery.com. Images of the artworks, installation views and videos, as they become available will be available for viewing at the following link https://davidrichardgallery.com/exhibit/592-heather-mcgill.
The presentation includes 10 new paintings produced over the past 30 months during the pandemic. The new paintings were created with the artist’s novel process as she describes in the statement bellow. The compositions are abstract while the imagery is from the natural world and specifically from readymade fabrics and lace mass produced for women’s clothing and draperies. Each painting has many layers of imagery and paint that is then sanded to reveal colors and patterns below. Looking closer reveals floral and insect motifs bringing nature into the patterning and overall psychedelic feel as well as designs from iconic fashion designers.
Art historical references, numerous binaries, and subversions anchor the new work in painting, but McGill’s processes are rooted in sculpture, which dominated most of her studio practice and teaching career. Hence, the casting process with gel medium and textiles as stencils for patterns and imagery, as well as the use of automotive paints and lacquers comes naturally to the artist. The additions of painted and coordinated imagery on borders, and often more than one, functions as a frame, but also adds dimensionality and depth to the paintings and hence, making them object-like and co-locating them as sculpture.
Heather McGill’s Statement About This Exhibition And Artwork:
My process involves painting and casting patterns onto the surface of wood substates using woven or knit fabrics as stencils. A trick borrowed from car customizers, who in the early 1960’s transferred floral patterns to the hood of their cars by spraying lacquer through lingerie lace, forever fusing the female body with the automotive. I use cloth that is mass-produced and endlessly duplicated primarily for women’s apparel of which floral patterns are the most popular. I am drawn to the formalizing of the natural world found in the iconography of these textiles-representations of butterflies, flowers and spider webs organized within the repeating structure of the woven cloth. These fabrics are neither unique nor costly and their shelf life is subject to the tyranny of trends and fashion. As a result, they provide a readymade stencil sold by the yard, a stencil that reflects contemporary and historical pattern, decoration, and taste.
Twenty-five years ago I moved to the suburbs of Detroit and became proficient at applying automotive surfacers, such as lacquer and urethane paints to my sculpture. I continue to use these skills today, spraying multiple coats of pigment to achieve a seamless and mechanized look. The material structure is achieved by casting successive floral patterns using a stenciling method to either block or retain information beneath, creating a luscious layering of floral figure/ground. Within most fabric stores there lies the “save-the-date” section, selections of bridal fabrics with unabashed sequin and pearl decoration, pale coloration, it is here where I harvest my most fruitful patterns. Within this process of transferring visual information from fabric to panel, I imbue a transmutation of meaning, economy and context or a reflection of things exactly as they are.
About Heather McGill:
Heather McGill received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, but some of her greatest influences were from her earlier studies at UC Davis where she studied with Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Roy De Forest and Wayne Thiebaud. A little further south in California, the Finish Fetish group in Los Angeles also had a significant impact on her work— especially the Dentoseries by Billy Al Bengston—particularly regarding her sculptures and work with acrylic plastic. McGill was trained in sculpture, so her hands-on approach with various materials and mechanical processes comes naturally to her. The artist’s works, whether three-dimensional sculptures or two-dimensional wall pieces, are concerned with the formal properties of “pattern, color and space”. McGill’s 26-year teaching career at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit where the automation and mass production of automobiles, development of novel plastics, resins and other materials along with the spectacular autobody paint colors and lacquers has had a long-lasting impact on her work and become a recurring theme influencing her processes and work.
Exhibiting in museums and galleries nationally and internationally since 1984, McGill’s artworks have been reviewed in Artforum, Art In America, ART News, ART PAPERS, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe among numerous other publications. Her artworks arencludeed in the permanent collections of Albright Knox, Buffalo, NY, Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, MI, Miami Art Museum, FL, Hood Art Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, The Kresge Art Museum, The Progressive Art Collection, Daimler Chrysler World Headquarters, Auburn Hills, MI, and Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA among numerous other public and private collections.
About David Richard Gallery:
Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field—in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.
In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Art Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. The Gallery opened its current location in New York in 2017.
All Artwork
Copyright © Heather McGill.
Courtesy David Richard Gallery.
All Installation Photographs by Yao Zu Lu