Jason McLean
b. 1971, Canada, lives and works in NYC
CV
Brooklyn based Canadian artist, Jason McLean, creates autobiographical imagery, through scavenged objects, and memory mapping. Jason McLean’s diverse art practice includes sculpture, sound works, zines, book works, mixed-media installations, correspondence art, curatorial explorations, puppets, and performance, but he is probably best known for his diaristic mapping and surreal drawings. Inspirations fueling his daily observations are relationships with local and visited environments. His works are often described as mental maps, where samplings of his daily observations are mashed-up into antiheroic, yet poignant combinations. Grounded in family life as Husband and Father, McLean works by using humour to touch upon challenging subject matter, such as sadness, loss, displacement, and economic hardship.
Jason McLean was born in London, ON in 1971. After attending H.B. Beal Secondary School, McLean graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver in 1997. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including shows at The National Gallery of Canada, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Loyal Gallery in Malmo Sweden, Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, Franklin Parrish Gallery and Zieher Smith Gallery in New York City. He has work in major collections throughout North America including the Museum of Modern Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Bank of Montreal Collection and the Royal Bank of Canada. McLean is represented by Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Canada, Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Van der Plas Gallery in New York.
CV
Brooklyn based Canadian artist, Jason McLean, creates autobiographical imagery, through scavenged objects, and memory mapping. Jason McLean’s diverse art practice includes sculpture, sound works, zines, book works, mixed-media installations, correspondence art, curatorial explorations, puppets, and performance, but he is probably best known for his diaristic mapping and surreal drawings. Inspirations fueling his daily observations are relationships with local and visited environments. His works are often described as mental maps, where samplings of his daily observations are mashed-up into antiheroic, yet poignant combinations. Grounded in family life as Husband and Father, McLean works by using humour to touch upon challenging subject matter, such as sadness, loss, displacement, and economic hardship.
Jason McLean was born in London, ON in 1971. After attending H.B. Beal Secondary School, McLean graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver in 1997. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including shows at The National Gallery of Canada, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Loyal Gallery in Malmo Sweden, Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, Franklin Parrish Gallery and Zieher Smith Gallery in New York City. He has work in major collections throughout North America including the Museum of Modern Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Bank of Montreal Collection and the Royal Bank of Canada. McLean is represented by Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Canada, Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Van der Plas Gallery in New York.
Walkie - Talkie, 2019
Mónica Reyes Gallery is delighted to present Jason McLean's work once again in Vancouver. McLean, who back in 2005, painted the ceiling in the foyer of the Vancouver Art Gallery and has received much attention and success after moving to Brooklyn, NY where he currently lives and works.
Jason McLean’s practice covers a range of media from drawing, to sculpture to collage. It also includes collaborative work and participation in the underground ‘zine scene, and mail art projects.
Using pencils, felt markers, acrylics and pastels McLean records his daily experiences, observations and personal stories. Working on a range of surfaces from paper, and papier maché to found objects such as baseball gloves and shoes, his drawings are often described as mental maps. Rubber Game for the Working Class, 2010, is one of McLean’s largest drawings to date. The piece began as a walking tour of the path he and his son would take from school each day. Also included in the drawing are references to mental health issues, sports trivia and Canadian art history.
In 2004 McLean was chosen by MacLean’s Magazine as one of the top 10 artists to watch in Canada.
Since then McLean has partaken in various international and national projects and residencies. Some of his most prominent projects include the Mural at the Drake Hotel (2013) and a charitable T-shirt collection in collaboration with Jeremy Laing. Apart from that, Jason McLean formed the ‘Felix and Henry’s Canadian Pez Museum’ in 2014 and the ‘Henry and Jay’s Collection Agency’, an ongoing project together with his son. In the latter, he is curating the changing displays of Pez dispensers and collected ephemera at the Brooklyn Public Library in Caroll Gardens, recently featured in the New York Post.
Beside these projects McLean was presented in numerous solo and group shows throughout Canada, America, Mexico and Europe, such as at the Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa, Italy (2007), as part of the exhibition project ‘Even My Mum Can Make a Book’ in Stuttgart and Berlin, Germany (2014), or at the Kaviar Factory in Norway (2018). On top of that, McLean was featured in the 2012 Canadian Biennial titled “Builders”, dedicated to highlighting Canadian artists who are crucial to the art community, and part of the monumental group exhibition “Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present” at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2017-2018); placing him amongst some of the most significant contemporary Canadian artists.
Jason McLean’s practice covers a range of media from drawing, to sculpture to collage. It also includes collaborative work and participation in the underground ‘zine scene, and mail art projects.
Using pencils, felt markers, acrylics and pastels McLean records his daily experiences, observations and personal stories. Working on a range of surfaces from paper, and papier maché to found objects such as baseball gloves and shoes, his drawings are often described as mental maps. Rubber Game for the Working Class, 2010, is one of McLean’s largest drawings to date. The piece began as a walking tour of the path he and his son would take from school each day. Also included in the drawing are references to mental health issues, sports trivia and Canadian art history.
In 2004 McLean was chosen by MacLean’s Magazine as one of the top 10 artists to watch in Canada.
Since then McLean has partaken in various international and national projects and residencies. Some of his most prominent projects include the Mural at the Drake Hotel (2013) and a charitable T-shirt collection in collaboration with Jeremy Laing. Apart from that, Jason McLean formed the ‘Felix and Henry’s Canadian Pez Museum’ in 2014 and the ‘Henry and Jay’s Collection Agency’, an ongoing project together with his son. In the latter, he is curating the changing displays of Pez dispensers and collected ephemera at the Brooklyn Public Library in Caroll Gardens, recently featured in the New York Post.
Beside these projects McLean was presented in numerous solo and group shows throughout Canada, America, Mexico and Europe, such as at the Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa, Italy (2007), as part of the exhibition project ‘Even My Mum Can Make a Book’ in Stuttgart and Berlin, Germany (2014), or at the Kaviar Factory in Norway (2018). On top of that, McLean was featured in the 2012 Canadian Biennial titled “Builders”, dedicated to highlighting Canadian artists who are crucial to the art community, and part of the monumental group exhibition “Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present” at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2017-2018); placing him amongst some of the most significant contemporary Canadian artists.
"Jason McLean and Ross Bell: Dad Club"
June 4 – August 28, 2022 | Gallery Stratford
"When it comes to artists working together, the least obvious pairings can sometimes produce the most interesting results – think Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Such partnerships are about solo artists breaking away from long-held approaches to artmaking and embracing collaboration.
Such was Jason McLean’s motivation for inviting Ross Bell to participate in this exhibition, the working title of which, at the time of writing, was “Dad Art”. (Both artists are fathers.) For more than 25 years, McLean has produced paintings, drawings, collage, zines and objects of a decidedly funky, free-form and maximalist nature, the imagery rooted in pop culture, history, lived experiences and unconscious memory. He cites Art Green, a founding member of Chicago’s fantastical Hairy Who collective as an inspiration. Bell, on the other hand, is known for large-scale hard-edged sculptures that take a reductionist approach to form. He has an appreciation for Minimalists like Carl Andre. How can two artists, whose aesthetics seem poles apart, come together?
“Quite simply, Ross has abilities that I don’t have,” explains McLean. “I can’t build things like he does, so he is making the structures on which I will paint and draw. Working with Ross has been like having a handyman for a partner, someone who knows how to fix anything.” For example, Bell is building an arcade game structure in which McLean will show animations. He is also refurbishing a vintage radio cabinet to house McLean’s “Cough Park” project. Inspired by poet John Giorno’s “Dial-a-Poem” work, people are invited to call a number and leave a message about anything – a joke, a song, a poem, a recollection, a dream. To date, “Cough Park” includes recordings left by everyone from Elton John to the artist’s parents.
For Bell, the exhibition presented an opportunity to put aside his usual studio-based rules about art making. “My work is about paring back, but Jason’s isn’t about that,” he says. “I can’t wait to see how the structures I’m building are transformed by Jason painting on them. I’m also an artist who gets all the work for a show finished well in advance, but the pandemic forced us to think differently about making work together.”
An object sure to be an audience favourite is called the “Stratfordcaster”, a guitar constructed by Bell – inspired by the guitars of London, Ontario-based sculptor Murray Favro – on which McLean will likely map out Stratford’s musical legacies. According to McLean – whose practice involves researching the pop culture and social histories of where he’s exhibiting – some musicians in the legendary rock group The Band and Janis Joplin’s Full-Tilt Boogie Band have ties to the Stratford area. McLean’s “detective work” is integral to an artwork’s production, and viewers must use their own sleuthing skills to uncover the associations between the fragments of text and images. In fact, both artists’ practices require viewers to take their time: in McLean’s case to discern the thread that winds through a painting or drawing, in Bell’s case to recognize the beauty in his structures’ material qualities.
Attentive viewers will also discern abstract depictions of the body in both artists’ work. Cartoonish bodies often appear in McLean’s drawings, while an outdoor installation by Bell incorporates mook-yan-jong figures, dummies used for kung-fu practice. Ideas around corporeal and sensory experiences also inform a proposed sculpture inspired by the Dreamachine created by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.
“In the end, people will interact with and interpret the objects based on their own experiences and knowledge,” says Bell. And, perhaps, viewers will also leave the exhibition feeling as if they’ve just emerged from a dream.
Essay by Bill Clarke for Akimbo, August 2022
Such was Jason McLean’s motivation for inviting Ross Bell to participate in this exhibition, the working title of which, at the time of writing, was “Dad Art”. (Both artists are fathers.) For more than 25 years, McLean has produced paintings, drawings, collage, zines and objects of a decidedly funky, free-form and maximalist nature, the imagery rooted in pop culture, history, lived experiences and unconscious memory. He cites Art Green, a founding member of Chicago’s fantastical Hairy Who collective as an inspiration. Bell, on the other hand, is known for large-scale hard-edged sculptures that take a reductionist approach to form. He has an appreciation for Minimalists like Carl Andre. How can two artists, whose aesthetics seem poles apart, come together?
“Quite simply, Ross has abilities that I don’t have,” explains McLean. “I can’t build things like he does, so he is making the structures on which I will paint and draw. Working with Ross has been like having a handyman for a partner, someone who knows how to fix anything.” For example, Bell is building an arcade game structure in which McLean will show animations. He is also refurbishing a vintage radio cabinet to house McLean’s “Cough Park” project. Inspired by poet John Giorno’s “Dial-a-Poem” work, people are invited to call a number and leave a message about anything – a joke, a song, a poem, a recollection, a dream. To date, “Cough Park” includes recordings left by everyone from Elton John to the artist’s parents.
For Bell, the exhibition presented an opportunity to put aside his usual studio-based rules about art making. “My work is about paring back, but Jason’s isn’t about that,” he says. “I can’t wait to see how the structures I’m building are transformed by Jason painting on them. I’m also an artist who gets all the work for a show finished well in advance, but the pandemic forced us to think differently about making work together.”
An object sure to be an audience favourite is called the “Stratfordcaster”, a guitar constructed by Bell – inspired by the guitars of London, Ontario-based sculptor Murray Favro – on which McLean will likely map out Stratford’s musical legacies. According to McLean – whose practice involves researching the pop culture and social histories of where he’s exhibiting – some musicians in the legendary rock group The Band and Janis Joplin’s Full-Tilt Boogie Band have ties to the Stratford area. McLean’s “detective work” is integral to an artwork’s production, and viewers must use their own sleuthing skills to uncover the associations between the fragments of text and images. In fact, both artists’ practices require viewers to take their time: in McLean’s case to discern the thread that winds through a painting or drawing, in Bell’s case to recognize the beauty in his structures’ material qualities.
Attentive viewers will also discern abstract depictions of the body in both artists’ work. Cartoonish bodies often appear in McLean’s drawings, while an outdoor installation by Bell incorporates mook-yan-jong figures, dummies used for kung-fu practice. Ideas around corporeal and sensory experiences also inform a proposed sculpture inspired by the Dreamachine created by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.
“In the end, people will interact with and interpret the objects based on their own experiences and knowledge,” says Bell. And, perhaps, viewers will also leave the exhibition feeling as if they’ve just emerged from a dream.
Essay by Bill Clarke for Akimbo, August 2022
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JASON MCLEAN
Jason McLean shares his comments and thoughts during Covid19 after a month in lockdown in Brooklyn, NYC and also passes on the message regarding https://coughpark.bandcamp.com/ project. You too can participate by calling 1.347.601.4266. May 3, 2020 |
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