From Graffiti to Gallery

"It's pure chaos, claiming a territory that doesn't belong to you to state your own identity. It's like saying, 'I've got no other way to say I exist,'" Barry McGee said of his work as a street artist in a quote displayed on the wall of his newest show. The exhibition of his work currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art captures this chaotic energy by bringing together McGee’s vast array of media and artistic styles. The traveling exhibit, organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, is the first mid-career museum survey of the artist's work.

Although he was formally educated in painting and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, McGee, like many others of his time, chose not to confine himself to museum and gallery pieces. Instead, he looked to the city itself as a site for art and activism. Working as a graffiti artist under the tag name “Twist,” he first began showing his art in the late 1980s on the streets of San Francisco's Mission District. He drew inspiration from street protests on social issues, as well as politically motivated graffiti and signage, that emerged in a city wracked with economic hardship and reeling from the AIDS crisis. More recently, he has produced large-scale installation pieces such as flipped cars and trucks, bringing the anarchic urban experience into the gallery.

“Barry McGee is one of the most important contributors to the powerful and varied body of work that has emerged out of street culture,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss director of the ICA, in a press release. “His distinctive imagery, collaborative practice, and compassionate approach to the issues and energy of the streets have had a profound influence on a generation of artists.”

Starting with some rarely seen early works, the exhibit is organized chronologically and allows visitors to step through McGee's development as an artist. The exhibit shows broad stylistic variation, with pieces ranging from small, intensely detailed monochrome drawings to vast expanses of brightly colored geometric patterns. There appear to be no bounds to the variety of media McGee utilizes—a collection of wooden busts with attached arms mechanically spray paint a gallery wall; the faces of the homeless are painted on a cascade of glass bottles; painted galley trays reminiscent of McGee's time as a typesetter form the walls of a small house. There are televisions, a dumpster, scrap wood, sheet music and graffiti-covered signs.

One thing, however, is consistent. McGee favors large, in-your-face displays. Even his smaller pieces are exhibited in his characteristic “cluster” style: large groups of individually framed pieces coming together in a mass of imagery. One such display, made anew for each location the exhibition visits, bulges outward from the wall. “This large wall that visitors encounter head on was perfect. McGee likes to fill walls, and when given such a vast wall, he chose to fill edge to edge. The boil at the ICA seems to be the largest created so far,” wrote Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family senior curator at the ICA, who coordinated the exhibit. Porter was interviewed over email because of travel-related scheduling conflicts.

McGee installed the entirety of the exhibit's last room himself, calling it “The Boston Contemporary Art Center.” Here he reflects on his transition from street artist to museum artist: he presents in glass display cases items such as old bricks and Ziploc bags stuffed full of napkin drawing, piles his surfboards in a corner, and gives much of the space over to the work of other artists, including that of two Boston graffiti artists. “[This] is an astute and satirical way for McGee to show his newest paintings and sculptures, as well as to include collaborators who have been integral to his artwork,” Porter wrote.

Despite McGee's self-consciousness, Porter believes his work elegantly bridges the worlds of street and gallery and saw no challenge in capturing his aesthetic in a museum setting. “He is an artist, and we make art shows,” she wrote.