John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Tom McKinley. The exhibition will open on Tuesday, December 4th and will run through Saturday, January 5th. A reception for the artist will be held on Tuesday, December 4th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.
Tom McKinley, a Bay Area artist, paints with a style that blurs the line between realism and surrealism. Each tidy architectural interior is rendered with a realistic precision, but then soaked with surreal color. The interiors contain no life other than a glimpse of a view or a shaft of light from a peripheral window. In this exhibition, McKinley paints ten different cities from the world and activates the role of the viewer by placing subtle clues within each interior. With these clues, the viewer can guess where each interior is and, therefore, the title of each painting. In Paris, we see a decorative chaise lounge and a Leger on the wall. In London, we see a painting by Damien Hirst and a tea kettle. And, in Los Angeles, we see a Ruscha and Le Corbusier sofas. This interplay makes each of McKinley’s paintings a feast for the eyes and the mind.
This will be Tom McKinley’s third solo exhibition at John Berggruen Gallery.
