Nationality American | Known for Painting | |
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Born 1985 (age 31–32) Northfield, Minnesota | ||
Sam McKinniss (born 1985) is an American abstract and figurative postmodern painter based in Brooklyn.
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Education
Sam McKinniss was born in Minnesota and grew up in Connecticut. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland in 2005, he received a BFA in painting from the Hartford Art School in Hartford, Connecticut in 2007, and an MFA from the Steinhardt School at the New York University in 2013.
Work
McKinniss's work has been shown in galleries and museums since 2005. His first solo show in New York, entitled "Black Leather Sectional," opened at Joe Sheftel Gallery in May 2015 and his first solo show in Los Angeles, "Dear Metal Thing," opened at Team Bungalow in June 2015. His show "Egyptian Violet" opened at Team Gallery in New York in October 2016.
McKinniss paints in two distinct but complementary practices: representational works which are both seductive and funereal; and grey-scale abstractions. The two styles provide tension and counterpoint within his oeuvre.
In his figurative painting, McKinniss works from photographs, found images as well as pictures he took. His subjects include reclining male nudes, floral still lifes, and images from popular culture. McKinniss develops a symbolist vocabulary for contemporary figurative painting; he sources material primarily from online image searching.
McKinniss is interested in moments of unexpected emotional conflict, aggression and sexuality, defensiveness and vulnerability, pathos and humor. Seemingly disparate pop cultural icons are portrayed without cynicism in the artist’s fluent painterly style. McKinniss’ work is influenced by a number of eras in the history of painting, from the Baroque and Mannerist to Imagism and Abstract Expressionism.
Of particular importance to McKinniss’ practice are the works of Henri Fantin-Latour, a figurative French painter of the 19th Century who is known for his floral still-lives. Both McKinniss and Fantin-Latour work seek to access and distill the magic and pathos of Symbolism while limiting themselves to the knowable world: each is at once consumer and creator, curator and originator, spectator and carnivore.
McKinniss painted a series of "men in repose" for the second issue of Adult as well as the cover of Lorde's 2017 album Melodrama.
Exhibitions
