Kim MacConnel: "Slice of Life" at Luhring Augustine

Kim MacConnel: Slice of Life
Luhring Augustine Chelsea
531 West 24th Street, New York
October 25–December 21

By EDWARD WAISNIS November 21, 2024

The legendary Holly Solomon Gallery, with its unique roster of artists from, Laurie Anderson to Christopher Knowles, was the home base, so to speak, of Pattern and Decoration. As a founding member of the movement Kim MacConnel, together with his compatriots–Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Miriam Shapiro, Valerie Jaudon, Robert Zakanitch, Barbara Zucker, et. al.–produced a disruption by breaking with predominant, but waning, Minimalism. All the while retaining the grid as a foundational structure girding up their fresh practices. They also, unintentionally, formed a bridge to the soon to emerge East Village scene, the impending explosion of contemporary art and the New Wave 80s.

Kim MacConnel: Slice of Life, Luring Augustine Chelsea installation view

MacConnel, in this revival exhibition, is represented by work created between 1978 and 1982 covering the peak years of the era that climaxed with Neo Geo and neoExpressionism. In a sense these are time capsules embodying the quiver of possibility and offering release from the predominant intellectually elite dogma. The embrace of the oft disparaged realm of craft played into the shock of the new, the au courant mantra of Modernism–presenting an unexpected schism all while respecting the continuum by investing in revisionism.

Non-Western, pre-Columbian and ancient cultures have been long accepting of the practical crafts, and the decorative, subsuming all into a broader definition of aesthetics. It was about time that contemporary Western art followed suit. P&D provided an opportunity to follow precedent by absorbing the loom, the quilt and the clay vessel, etc. into the high art canon.

The sway of the blockbuster Treasures of Tutankhamen, that toured six American cities during the period under consideration in this show, brought an interest in all things Egyptian with a vast reach, from the choice of the moniker Memphis by the critically and popularly celebrated design and architecture firm to Sun Ra’s cosmic phantasmagoria, down to the dissipating ripples of The Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian. MacConnel’s integration of this influence is closer in spirit with Steve Martin and Cyndi Lauper’s interpretation, eschewing the scholarly in deference to ferocious panache. While I am confident that my fever dream of this connection has merit, I must admit that it could just as easily be the result of having gone down an Egyptology rabbit hole as post election balm.

Vacillating between carnival banners and gift-wrapping MacConnel’s stitched together bedsheet grounds are festooned with imagery, in blindingly colorful matte washes of acrylic, inspired by clip art books from Hong Kong, advertising from India and Mexico and Godzilla films channeled through MacConnel’s “nine-year-old alter ego”*. While encapsulating the spirit of the 80s these homage to retro sources land the work flatly in the sphere of kitsch. MacConnel compositions use an apparatus of five (periodically veering to four, or six) vertical bands of contrasting imagery recalling exquisite corpse exercises, minus the enforced ‘blinding’**. Another connective moment is generated in the jarring change-ups and flouncy manner found in the work, inducing a correlative to Jazz. In fact ‘jazzy’ would be an adjective that sums up what MacConnel’s work is all about, reveling in the showy, gaudy and the flamboyant.

Claude Viallat, a founding member of the Gallic counterpart to P&D, Supports/Surfaces, a near contemporary as well near precursor, provides an interesting example for comparison. For one thing, Viallat also favors an unstretched/unframed canvas. Where the distinction, between the two painters, lies is in Viallat’s  signature ‘go to’ lozenge-cum-cloud form in repeat along the axis of a grid, variation coming by change of chroma, producing a heavy reliance on the series. MacConnel, on the other hand, favors the abrupt and the over-the-top, pretty much squashing a valid alignment other than coinciding guiding principles, working methods, and corresponding career timelines. The tarps of Keith Haring, more of the street than the parlor, may be considered distant cousins.

Kim MacConnel, Dependable,1982 sewn acrylic painted cotton sheeting, 102 x 119 inches

 

Dependable, 1982, greets one upon entering the gallery with de rigueur vibrancy, setting the pace for what lies within. At roughly eight by nine feet it presents with mural-scaled predominance, as do the other nine equal, or near equal, sized paintings in the exhibition. The packed installation, with these near monumental works hung cheek to jowl results in a powerful frieze-scape that generates the reverential.

Incidently, a testament to the stability of MacConnel’s methods, and material choices, is that these works appear as fresh as the day they were made forty-plus years ago.

Kim MacConnel, Scientific,1979, sewn acrylic painted cotton sheeting, 98 x 100 inches

 

Scientific, 1979, tamps down the intensity with soothing powdery hues depicting a gamut of specimens–microbes, flora and fauna–that might be spied through the trio of microscopes floating against a tartan swath. While Thunder Bomb, 1981, insinuates a warning of man-made intervention into the natural environment with a blunt clash, and imposing tower structure overlaid with a screaming legend representing the title bookending bands envisioning bucolic butterflies and flower forms.

Kim MacConnel, Thunder Bomb,1981, sewn acrylic painted cotton sheeting, 102 x 142 inches

Kim MacConnel, Touristic,1980, sewn acrylic painted cotton sheeting, 93 x 120 inches

Touristic, 1980, recounts a distinctly American tour of Seattle (space needle) and Las Vegas, or perhaps Reno, (rolling dice) complete with a post-vacation home movie projecting the image of a beachside bathing beauty.

Kim MacConnel, Sketch, 1978, Gouache on paper, 19 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches

 

Additionally, there are nine gouache on paper sketches. Studies for large works, their exactitude continues the finesse found in the larger works while invoking the intimacy the artist experienced in making them. Alas, none of them plot the paintings in this exhibition; the ability for comparison would have added another level of inspection. Jah Rah, 1981, appropriately, given the Rastafarian wink in the title, there is a lion, is hung in concert with these in the second gallery.

Kim MacConnel, Jah Rah,1981, sewn acrylic painted cotton sheeting, 101 1/2  x 122 inches

 

A question that remains is whether the juncture where purposefully transgressive work, such as MacConnels’, effectively issued the call and response needed to disrupt the hegemony of the closing days of Formalism. The historical evidence disputes P&D marking such an outcome, rather registering this blip of a counter-movement as a nothing more than a buoyant release of pent up exhaustion with the status quo. Such philosophizing, in itself, proposes the necessity for re-examination and the need for exhibitions such as this. The pageantry alone provides ample reason to experience the festive spirit during this impending holiday season. Go for the spectacle, but stay for the delving. WM

* Luhring Augustine gallery press release.
** The press release cites MacConnel’s process as “both playful and provocative. In a manner akin to [sic] child’s game of Battleship” a game that exploited a correlation to the conceit by keeping competing players ‘in the dark’ to one another moves.