MCKAY OTTO

Exhibitions: Perpetual Light | Unconscious Equilibrium | Ever OK Ever |

ARTIST STATEMENT 

In consideration of the dimensional relationships that exist between drawing, painting, and sculpture, this work is concerned with freeing two-dimensionality in painting. The specially formulated transparent canvas provides the opportunity to work within and transform the traditional support of painting. As the rigidity of the planar support becomes dissolved, the circumstance arises to create works that are inwardly divisible and outwardly expanding. The implementation of the grid serves as a drawn formal structure that both stabilizes the surface of the art object while simultaneously creating passages for the viewer to literally see beyond. Despite what your eyes are telling you, the canvas is transparent, and the painting is emitting ethereal light. What we see is a shadow cast of that which we do not see. This notion of being able to see beyond the surface directly truncates the preconceived necessity of pictorial space and frees it to exist within the context of its own physical embodiment. Timelessness and a universal appeal amplify consciousness in perpetual stillness. This work may serve as a metaphor for humanity’s capacity to transcend itself.

Being a voyager encompasses a passage into the otherworldly. Given the art predilection for an often flat surface treatment in imagery, one that does not necessarily attract an ethereal reading, it makes sense to journey into other dimensions beyond this material world. The works themselves are deeply abstract, telling no story beyond the display of materials. The work suggests a luminous state just on the other side of the material. McKay makes no metaphysical claims for his work, yet an air of mystery pervades what he does. The jump from materials to dimensions inhabited by a quiet life makes McKay’s work particularly moving. Maybe, too, it is not only a quest but an emotional state McKay decides to illustrate. But besides being a window into some other place , the work also suggests a state of being, in which seeing is severely limited by the visual. We are always constrained by the limits of our vision! So while the work’s intimate visions beyond its structure, it also emphasizes that this is an imagined place, one emphasizing the attainment of imagination beyond the material world and gives an excellent opening into the sensibility of someone whose efforts imitate both the life of art and the aura surrounding it.

“Our true sanctuary lays in the light in silence. Truthfulness lives in the ethereal oneness into which neither menacing worries nor crashing worlds can intrude.” – McKay

SOME MCKAY PROCESS POINTS:

Wanting the viewer to have the feeling of entering not an artwork, but a sanctum filled with ethereal light. McKay believes in the invisible , underlying reflections inherent in light like color. His work is abstract, drawn in part from the ordered universe and leaving no recognizable imagery - figures, landscapes, material world behind. Transparent-lucent acrylic canvas is his signature material, and painting and sculpture are his preferred gestures. He is as confident of his mastery of reflecting light to produce ethereal colors as he is his artistic vision and his ability to see the possibilities within light and beyond. He thinks of ways to work with the powerful forces waiting in the light to be reflected. But the other side of this is the powerful ability to read the possibility inherent in the light and it’s his intuitive sense to look at a material object and just know that there is an art work there ready to be transformed and transcend itself in his almost ephemeral state of mind necessary for achieving the unthinkable. A mysterious inner life glows from McKay’s creations that exhibit dual natures. On the one hand they exude a sense of stillness, exemplified by the receptivity of the transparent- lucent acrylic canvas to inventions born by reflecting light. References to a vastness with nothing and everything - suggests a state of oneness coexistence between humans and the universal. But there are other currents: the outside covered in rubbed graphite, creating a blur, a myopia homage. This graphite surface has a subtle tension that’s held within the geometry of each piece. This tension is magnified by the elemental qualities of the graphite. Because of the way this material is smudged, these works have an opaque picture plane where you cannot see into the depths of the surface. In some ways, the physical material of graphite tries to keep us out, while the translucent surfaces invite us in. This darkness in his work is not the murk of evil, but rather another veil of mystery that shrouds the complexities of the material world. This intermingling of dark and light, literally in the different reflections of the vastness of the transparent-lucent canvas and the dark blurred graphite surfaces are central to this work. It suggests a fluid hybrid sensibility in which opposites coexist without losing anything of their distinctive natures. Meaning comes when we connect the seen with the unseen.

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