Parrot Talk: A Retrospective of Works by Kim McConnel
Exhibition Catalog
Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2003
A survey spanning thirty years of production by one of the key figures in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Parrot Talk was organized by curator and writer Michael Duncan. MacConnel’s paintings, sculptures, and collages explore the full range of contemporary visual culture, drawing on everything from Matisse to the Simpsons. Mixing high and low sources with abandon, MacConnel relishes the juxtaposition of modernist images and ideas with their sources in so-called primitive cultures. His works of the 1990s explore the wild mix in Third World countries of traditional artifacts and Western consumer detritus. Drawing on the Western traditions of painting and photography in conjunction with African house-painting patterns and Chinese schoolbook illustrations, MacConnel conjures a genuinely multicultural style.
Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2003
A survey spanning thirty years of production by one of the key figures in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Parrot Talk was organized by curator and writer Michael Duncan. MacConnel’s paintings, sculptures, and collages explore the full range of contemporary visual culture, drawing on everything from Matisse to the Simpsons. Mixing high and low sources with abandon, MacConnel relishes the juxtaposition of modernist images and ideas with their sources in so-called primitive cultures. His works of the 1990s explore the wild mix in Third World countries of traditional artifacts and Western consumer detritus. Drawing on the Western traditions of painting and photography in conjunction with African house-painting patterns and Chinese schoolbook illustrations, MacConnel conjures a genuinely multicultural style.