Kevin McNamee-Tweed’s exhibition "Natural Clock" considers the theme of Time, how it is constructed, expressed, and asserts itself. In the selection of new drawings and ceramic paintings Time becomes redundant, material, and often absurd. In one ceramic work, a mountainous green landscape shows humans pushing giant clocks up the terrain. In another work, bicyclists pedal around the rings of Saturn. Numerically incoherent clocks of the classic circle with hands design are scattered throughout the body of work. And although the passage of time permeates, many works in the exhibition simply center on narrative scenes such as a bird in a pie cooling on a window sill, or a crashing wave, a butterfly approaching a flower, or a person in an apartment window throwing food to a building-sized seagull.
McNamee-Tweed is interested in the myriad ways humans measure existence. He looks at science, the humanities, and visual culture as metrics for imposing scale and proportion on the unfathomable scope of existence. Put differently, his work looks at meaning-making. Most intimately, his pursuits converge on questions about the nature of aesthetic information, from the art-historical to the commonplace, with special interest in what happens when meanings and contexts become transient. McNamee-Tweed’s imagery often combines narrative drama, depictions of beauty, and emotional saturation. The images and objects he makes derive from a state of play, from fundamental curiosity, and from a continual return to mark-making.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display through October 2.