Interior 2, 2009, oil and acrylic
Interior 3, 2009, oil and acrylicMcKenzie paints buildings in various states of construction, playfully referencing geometric abstraction and twentieth century Modernism. She applies paint to the canvas in ways that often break the unity of the image. The effect is perplexing but informative; her process parallels construction and her surfaces encourage the viewer to compare the structure of the paintings with the frames of the buildings she is painting. The gallery's founder, Jen Bekman, first viewed McKenzie's work at the Walker Museum's opening reception for its traveling exhibition, World's Away: New Suburban Landscapes. About first seeing the work, Ms. Bekman noted:
At first glance it seemed photorealistic, in part because it reminds me of the ground well trod by many of my favorite fine art photographers. But look closely and it's clearly not quite real -there is a flatness in both her paint and perspective that has the primitive feeling of folk art. Take that flatness in and allow yourself to focus on the lines, angles and grids of her work; suddenly you're fully immersed in geometric abstraction, a la the twentieth century Modernists. The familiarity of the subject matter allows me to travel through these genres with ease.
Worlds Away, a traveling exhibition, will open at the Yale School of Architecture in March 2009. Her work has been exhibited at institutions throughout the country, including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bemis Center, the University of Akron, and the Katonah Museum of Art. McKenzie’s paintings have been featured in New York Times articles by Grace Glueck and Allison Arieff, as well as in Art in America, Dwell, The Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Denver Post.
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