After his 99 Cents Only Store takeover, street artist Barry McGee takes over a gallery
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Set us as preferred San Francisco artist Barry McGee, 60, walked through Jeffrey Deitch’s Santa Monica Boulevard gallery on a recent Wednesday, while a small army of friends went about their business — some moving objects, others equipped with power tools.A few stood near a closet-size replica of a 99 Cents Only store, an homage to the weeklong art takeover McGee staged at the shuttered Wilshire Boulevard retailer in February.Gallery visitors were careful not to step on the sprawling assemblage of photographs, drawings and artifacts scattered across the floor.
Many were destined for the large installation McGee’s friends helped to assemble for “Another Round,” his recently opened exhibition, which runs through Jan.30.Like “99 CENT,” McGee’s aim is for the Deitch show to serve as a gathering place.
A makeshift storefront houses an “anarchist bookstore” with activities organized by Matthew James-Wilson, who operates the Heavy Manners lending library and gallery in Echo Park.Events planned during the show’s three-month run include French beading and papier-mâché workshops, clothed figure drawing, and “music shows.”Adjacent to the bookstore, the untitled work bends and bulges on a plywood structure.
It serves as a portal into McGee’s artistic life: Framed messages, photographs of friends, colorful, textile-inspired imagery and his father’s sketches of cars on napkins are grouped together in a bold display.A related installation is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has also been shown at the Oakland Museum of California.“It feels like something entirely new this time and definitely unplanned,” McGee said of the work taking shape at the Deitch show.The exhibition is billed as McGee’s first gallery exhibit with Deitch in more than 20 years, although the artist and dealer have collaborated on projects since the 1990s.
McGee came up in San Francisco�...