Barry Mcgee

Barry McGee's art buzzes with an infectious street vitality that celebrates the rich pageant of city living, while lambasting its "ills, overstimulations, frustrations, addictions." His early years as a graffiti artist, tagging on the streets of San Francisco under such monikers as Ray Fong, Twist and Twisto, still nourish his need to inscribe the blank face of modern life with the personal and the handmade. A part of the early 90s art and graffiti boom associated with San Francisco's Mission School (others include Clare Rojas, Chris Johanson and Aaron Noble) and with the Beautiful Losergeneration, McGee synthesizes a wide range of resources, including the Mexican muralists, anonymous street art and San Francisco Beat poetry, all of which are notably characterized by a sense of public address that McGee never neglects to convey in his own work. His paintings, drawings and installations spill over with graphic energy and political anger, and direct exhortations to his audience to respond to the life around them. This broad survey is McGee's first hardcover monograph, and is compiled from the artist's personal archives, incorporating retrospective images and examples of more recent installations. It is the definitive book on a much-loved artist. Barry McGeewas born in San Francisco in 1968 and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. He continues to live and work in that city. He has had solo exhibitions at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, Deitch Projects in New York and the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan.