Robert McCann: Bell, Eagle & Anchor

Amos Eno Gallery is pleased to present Bell, Eagle & Anchor, a solo exhibition featuring recent paintings by Robert A. McCann running from February 2 through the 26th.  An opening reception will be held on Friday, February 3 from 7- 9 PM at the gallery’s location on the lower level of 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn, NY, directly across the street from the Morgan Ave L train stop.

This group of large-scale artworks portrays an American scene populated by stars of pro wrestling.  The cast of bigger-than-life characters in these wrestling pictures explore territories pitched somewhere between tragic-comedy and comic-tragedy.  Including elements of portraiture, abstraction, personal mythology, and history painting, McCann’s canvases embrace the multiplicity of the medium and an essential human element.  The resulting paint fields are layered, physical, and undemocratically distributed.  McCann treats painting as an external idea space where double readings and tactile material incidents build toward meaning over time.

Robert A. McCann is a Midwest-based artist and educator.  Born and raised in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, he received an MFA in Painting from Indiana University in 2001 and subsequently pursued creative practice in Germany as a Fulbright scholar.  Since that time his paintings have frequently dealt with the potential for metaphors in our byzantine mass media culture, and with the overwriting of epic and intimate events in the particular artifice of painting.  McCann’s recent venues of exhibition include the University of Arkansas Galleries in Little Rock, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Ormond Memorial Art Museum in Florida.  In April 2017 he will mount a solo show at the South Bend Museum of Art in Indiana.