Andrew James McKay: NORMALIZATIONS

Andrew James McKay, Big Black Coat. Acrylic with ink and graphite on panel. 30″ by 28″. 2024. Image by Rachel Topham Photography.

Andrew James McKay: NORMALIZATIONS

November 2 – 29, 2024
Reception: November 2, 2024, 2 – 4pm
New Leaf Editions, Vancouver

“It must’ve bore repeated mention because it kept coming up: the paintings seemed to have a beginning and an end. I wondered at intervals if I’d been containing the audience by having so clearly delineated the two points, irrespective of whether I’d done it intentionally or not. And besides, shouldn’t a painting always have those mysterious traits of being eternal and infinite? The consumer today, of images or of other things, does prefer that consumables somehow be everything to everyone.

“But actually, the people who have taken the time to note this A to B—aren’t wrong. Like all situations and phenomena if we’re to be honest, the pictures of course start and finish. This, both in terms of the literal making of them as objects, and in terms of how they are necessarily read. We live in a distinctly ahistorical time but only so much can be done about this.

Andrew James McKay, Famous Foods. Etching with aquatint, spitbite and burnishing. Plate impression of 4″ by 6″. 2024. Image by TR Trades.

“I’m trying to make pictures that are concerned with my own experience about the time in which I live and work. A lot of painting, especially figurative painting, is bogged down with nostalgia—references to historical images now haggard for having been so often pointed to, or otherwise under the spell of a fanciful sense of the ‘good old days.’ Even worse but no less critically, we also contend with a proliferation of images crippled by a cynicism about what the future holds: please no more pictures of looming spectres and unknown crises! For good measure, probably not a bad idea to also dispose of wistful images, cinematic images (these oily reproductions of film stills are never of contemporary superhero movies but rather are evocative of a ‘certain era,’ aren’t they?), and the images crammed with hollowed-out and false romanticism.

Are sincere images possible now? Can one make an image with forthrightness, conscientiousness, and an honesty that doesn’t demand either the maker or viewer or both recede from the reality in which we must exist? Are these those images?”

– Andrew James McKay, Autumn 2024

Andrew James McKay, Water Feature. Acrylic with ink and graphite on panel. 25″ by 28.5″. 2023. Image by Rachel Topham Photography.

About Andrew James McKay:

Andrew James McKay is a graduate of the honours arts programme at Emily Carr University of Art+Design. In 2019 he became the first student in the history of that institution to be awarded upon graduation the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation. A three-time recipient of grant support from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, his work has been exhibited with Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York; Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles; Ground Floor Art Centre, Vancouver; Peter Ohler’s Fine Art, Toronto; and Masters Gallery, Calgary.

Website: andrewjamesmckay.com
Instagram: @andrewjamesmckay

With thanks to the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation for their generous support of this exhibition.

New Leaf Editions
3-1244 Cartwright Street
Vancouver, BC V6H 3R7
604.689.9918
Website: newleafeditions.com
Instagram: @newleafeditions

The gallery space at New Leaf Editions is wheelchair accessible.