They Are Full Of Holy Nonsense

Gallery Exhibition/Event
Posted on April 3, 2011

A solo exhibition of dynamic multimedia work by John Patrick McKenzie.

April 28 – June 22, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 28, 2011, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

San Francisco, Monday, April 3, 2011 John Patrick McKenzie is known internationally for his signature calligraphic ink works on paper. His stream of consciousness texts oscillate between cultural commentary, poetic musing, and the systematic naming and ordering of things: words, objects, birthdays, etc. They are Full of Holy Nonsense, the first solo exhibition of McKenzie’s work at Creativity Explored Gallery, thoughtfully represents various overarching themes in the artist’s repertoire”wordplay, math calculations, one-liners, 3D drawings”and also highlights a few of McKenzie’s recent and lesser-known works on found materials. Just as his style of working frequently changes, so do the meanings of his messages: unusual word pairings and phrases sometimes evoke a deep sadness, and are at other times full of great whimsy. For this reason, viewing the show is itself a poetic experience.

John Patrick McKenzie was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with his family just two years later, landing in San Francisco in 1964. He has called the Mission District home for the last forty-seven years and has been making artwork at Creativity Explored since 1989.

McKenzie began to delve into writing as an art form in his adolescence, though it was after working a short time at Creativity Explored that he developed his unique calligraphic style and started experimenting with materials and composition. He traditionally works in black ink on white paper and in silver ink on black paper, though he occasionally experiments with colored ink and writes on other surfaces. His work is largely inspired by mass media and pop culture; he is fascinated with government officials, actors and the characters they play, musicians, Chinese Astrology, and food. He is never far from a radio or television set”he digests headline news and entertainment programs and then re-contextualizes the public figures within them”elevating some of them to superhuman status.

One star that particularly interests McKenzie is Joyce DeWitt, most famous for her role as “Janet Wood”  on the ABC sitcom Three's Company. Her name appears in many of McKenzie’s works, a few of which are included in this exhibition. One piece from 2010 states, “Joyce Anne DeWitt likes two thousand and twelve the end of the world.” 

Spiritual or apocalyptic references like the above also frequently occur in McKenzie’s work. Commonly, sentences begin with “They are full of holy,”  though the endings widely differ. The title of this show, They are Full of Holy Nonsense, was adopted from a small, one-line piece the artist made in 2006. Jesus Christ occasionally appears as a subject as well; a memorable black and white work in this exhibition reads, “Jesus Christ likes American cars.” 

Another great interest of McKenzie’s is the year and decade in which people were born. He is generally fixated on young adulthood”in red and blue ink on white paper, one 3D piece reads, “The Beach Boys like to smoke Winston cigarettes in the 60s and 70s in their 20s and 30s.”  The artist’s preoccupation with birth year has also led him to make a number of works with mathematical equations, often relating to astrology. One large work in this exhibition, titled Year of the Tiger Series (2010), is a grid comprised of fifteen sheets of paper on which McKenzie wrote “2010”  and then subtracted the number “12”  over and over again, until he arrived at “0.” 

“What is so interesting about John Patrick McKenzie’s work is that there is always some sort of methodology at play” a system at work, a code to crack” but only he knows the exact rules and how to apply them,”  says Eric Larson, Curator of They are Full of Holy Nonsense.

Like years and decades, McKenzie approaches words in a similar way ”pairing, grouping and categorizing them”using free association. A section of Acne, Pimp, Jerk (2007) reads “bang boom beep,”  “wrap chap,”  “deaf mute grid,”  “care “ less,”  and in another work, Armpit, Scent, Sweat (2009), various wood pieces marked with individual words read, “armpit, scent, sweat, dirt, dirty, saliva, spit, feces, alive, dead, death,”  McKenzie has also given paint samples one word or short phrase. A series of various green rectangular samples begins with “coma, peroxide, bath towel,”  and ends with “chopsticks, spare ribs, sausage.”  These unlikely verbal inventories are intriguing and encourage viewers themselves to engage in the practice of free association.

While many of McKenzie’s pieces have an implicitly rare humor (i.e. “Sexy people are apple pies”), other works about life, death and aging cut right to the heart. In Past the Time Away (2011), he penned the following text onto a Felix Gonzalez-Torres poster of a bird flying in a cloud-filled sky (Untitled, 1992/1993): “born and die, birth and death, past the time away, everybody will die, come and go, diploma, life insurance, we are only passing through this earth, congraduation [sic], graduate, retire, earth is nothing, heaven or hell, end of the world.”  In poignant works like this, McKenzie states the inevitable”distilling the process of living into a handful of phrases, which is somehow more saddening than expressive phrases on the same subject might be.

It is unusual for an artist to be able to incite laughter, nostalgia, melancholy, and bewilderment from an audience, and John Patrick McKenzie’s work manages to do all of these things. His artwork is stylistically unique, visually captivating, tonally diverse, and undeniably mysterious. This carefully curated exhibition is the perfect place to ponder, and perhaps uncover, the meaning of life, the mathematics of birthdays, and the “sexiness”  of apple pies.

Selected works by John Patrick McKenzie will also be included in Create, an upcoming exhibition at UC Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA (May 11 “September 25), and a solo exhibition of the artist’s work will be held at Brett McDowell Gallery in Dunedin, New Zealand (June 17 - July 7).

Calendar Listing

They are Full of Holy Nonsense

EXHIBITION AND OPENING: A solo exhibition of dynamic multimedia work by John Patrick McKenzie

What

John Patrick McKenzie is known internationally for his signature calligraphic ink works on paper. His stream of consciousness texts oscillate between cultural commentary, ptic musing, and the systematic naming and ordering of things: words, objects, birthdays, etc. They are Full of Holy Nonsense, the first solo exhibition of McKenzie’s work at Creativity Explored Gallery, thoughtfully represents various overarching themes in the artist’s repertoire”wordplay, math calculations, one-liners, 3D drawings”and also highlights a few of McKenzie’s recent and lesser-known works on wood and found materials. Just as his style of working frequently changes, so do the meanings of his messages: unusual word pairings and phrases sometimes evoke a deep sadness, and are at other times full of great whimsy. For this reason, viewing the show is itself a ptic experience.

When

* Opening Reception: Thursday, April 28, 2011, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

* Exhibition Dates and Times: April 28 through June 22, 2011; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, Thursday from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, and Saturday from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm 

Where

Creativity Explored Gallery, 3245 16th Street at Guerrero Street, San Francisco CA 94103

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