David McDermott (born 1952) and Peter McGough (born 1958) met in the in the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and have since been renowned for their seemingly seamless fusion of art and life.
In this current exhibition, McDermott & McGough visit 1950s and early 1960s American suburbia and the pop culture imagery found in post-war advertisements, home interiors and comic books of the time. The paintings also incorporate a provocative “behind the scenes” script of pop typography, revealing undercurrents of sex and violence beneath gentrified exteriors. As Rosenblum notes in his accompanying essay: McDermott & McGough excavate what Freud might have called the id of mid-century suburban America.” Though the work borrows from 1950s archetypes, the imagery exposes previously hidden protagonists. A male couple embraces in the midst of teenage superheroes; a transvestite checks her lipstick. Boys with beer cans lounge seductively; other boys contemplate the weight of a basketball with renewed intensity. The paintings reveal the underlying tension not only of the average teenage boy’s culturally squelched fantasies, but that of a gay teenage boy’s fantasies. The anticipated repression associated with 1950s propriety is upended by a subtext of homoeroticism.
Cheim & Read Web Site
|
TRAVEL CALENDAR
