A master of graphic design and serigraphy, Ryan McGinness can transform nearly anything that comes to mind into a digital unit for making art. For the past three years, his focus has been on female nudes. He begins by drawing live models, taking the results through a process of analysis and simplification before scanning the refinements and turning them into files that can be reproduced at multiple scales in a variety of mediums. Two concurrent exhibitions—one offering black-and-white renderings and paintings at Gering & López, the other featuring colorful black-light canvases, sculptures and prints at Charles Bank—summarize the methodical approach McGinness has taken for this project.
At Gering & López, McGinness offers a few different series, including “Women Sketch Process Drawings,” in which three to five interpretations of female figures go from starting sketch to finished form. Meanwhile, in “Women Sketch Process,” the artist mixes photographs of posed models with accompanying illustrations on the same piece of paper. Similarly, the “Women Sketch and Solution” paintings display diptychs of silk-screened sketches juxtaposed with McGinness’s seductive ladies in their final, restroom-sign-like states.
Downtown, Bank fills its two floors with the artist’s femme fatales, transformed into black-light paintings, polychromed aluminum sculptures, monotypes and retired printing screens. Ending with a psychedelic exclamation mark, McGinness’s highly crafted artworks reveal his love of sexy, universal forms and his use of technology to create them anew.—Paul Laster