KEEGAN McHARGUE
FEEL THE WIND
Jack Hanley is pleased to present Keegan McHargue’s first exhibition for the gallery, Feel the Wind. Keegan’s drawing and painting evolves through an organic growth of stylistically unique lines to figure portraits of human/animal social relations.
Feel the Wind is an ambitious exhibition of new work that will be exhibited in both of Jack Hanley’s galleries. McHargue’s recent production of drawings and paintings will be exhibited along with an aquatint print edition made for the Paulson Press, Berkley Cal and large collage. The historically scaled collage work is a portrait of the cross-gendered revolutionary Lord Balkan, a legendary figure from 1960’s San Francisco counter-culture. McHargue has no defined interest in Balkan other then a personal resonance with the androgynous and individualistic nature of the Lord’s portrait. This use of disparate influences reverberates through out the drawings and paintings. In a sense, McHargue departs on a type of spritual nomadism, on an exploration of his own condition while actively inventing new myths. His line grows as he elaborates these narratives of profound human emotion. The intricate decorative elements and intense privacy of his images evokes a personal experience that is both unique and familiar. It is this quality that often leads to the work being interpreted as referential, however McHargue demonstrates his interest in a radical individualism by forging new emotional and visual ground through his art.
‘These dejavu’s and chances and everything else, there’s always going to be a time to find them all, which I guess is where you start a drawing: it’s where you can begin the web that spirals out to all the other things, a web chart but a fundamental idea always. And that idea can be as simple as suffering from a loss or feeling that you are at a point where nothing seems pretty to you anymore, or everything is just horrible and that’s the point of entry.’
-Keegan McHargue
Born in Portland, Oregon and brought up on the music and zine culture of the Pacific Northwest, Keegan McHargue has evolved his artistic voice through constant exploration and prolific output. At 21 years old, he has literally burst on the art world stage in the past year. McHargue presented his first solo exhibition last summer in NY at the Rivington Arms which was followed by a quick succession of important NY group exhibitions including ‘Blatant Localism’ at the Leo Konig Annex, ‘Today’s Man’ at John Connelly Presents and ‘We are Electric’, curated by Chris Perez for Deitch Projects. This is McHargues’s first solo exhibition on the West Coast.