A Hug From The Art World is pleased to announce
Shaina McCoy’s first New York solo exhibition, The Gaze.
The exhibition opens on Thursday, May 4th, from 6–8 PM, and will be on view through Saturday, June 10th, at A Hug From The Art World, 515 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011.
Shaina McCoy paints through the perspective of her grandfather’s lens. Steven Smith (or Pop Pop Chicken Foot, to borrow his familial title) provides an extensive photographic archive of source material. As such, McCoy seeks to capture the way a photographed moment feels, rather than replicating exactly how it looked. The viewer is left to situate the work, and thus the emotion it evokes, which may seem familiar, as if it were part of their own memory.
Shaina McCoy’s paintings are, in a way, a celebration of episodic memory. They distill universal, yet deeply personal emotions; the feeling of being held as a child, kissed by a loved one. They echo shared experience across generational and familial lines.
In Adorn, the viewer is confronted by an imagined reflection. Clearly, the painting’s subject is applying mascara in the mirror, despite having neither eyes nor eyelashes. Nonetheless, the viewer stands just behind her right shoulder, watching her watch herself. We recognize and even ideate ourselves in the actions of the images. The childless viewer can imagine holding their firstborn just as Shaina’s mother beholds her in Raspberry Kisses.
McCoy’s work speaks through color, shape, and texture instead of relying on details which are eschewed by long-term memory. Episodic memory and photography are doomed to play an eternal duet, sometimes in harmony but never in unison. It is always hazardous to extrapolate from the detail that is the photograph to a broader conclusion in one’s mind and then to credit the “truths” one has conjured from it. These truths are one’s own and the image doesn’t care.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Shaina McCoy (b. 1993, Minneapolis, MN) currently lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. McCoy comes from a lineage of creators. Her great-grandmother was a quilter, her grandfather is a photographer, and her father, a barber; each of whom continues to influence her. McCoy graduated from Minneapolis Community and Technical College with an AA in Fine Art in 2017, having previously attended the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
McCoy’s works have gained her notoriety at home and abroad and are included in several of the world’s leading private collections.
Her solo exhibitions include Apples to Oranges, Simchowitz, Los Angeles, CA (2022), Cadillac 4, Duarte Sequeira, Portugal (2022), B is For, Stems, Brussels, Belgium (2021) Father Father, François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020) and A Family Affair, Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA (2019). Selected group exhibitions include Riders of the Red Horse, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Body in Motion Traveling Bodies, Stems, Brussels, Belgium (2020); The Flat Files, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2019); 33 Works By 3 Artists, Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA (2018); Now More Than Always (Gimme Gimme the Money Please Please I Want the Money Please), Gildar Gallery, Denver, CO (2017); OverNorth Part 2, Venture North, Minneapolis, MN (2015); and Rapper’s Delight, City Wide Artists Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2015).