Ryan McCann: New Works

Ryan McCann, Coach, 2010. Blowtorch, oil and acrylic on wood, 72 x 48 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Ryan McCann: New Works

By Shana Beth Mason

A UCLA freshman quarterback starts at a sold-out game at the Coliseum against USC in 1999. He gets profiled in Sports Illustrated. After transferring to the University of Chattanooga Tennessee in 2003, he is selected by the Cincinnati Bengals as a free agent player. But the first week of training camp, he tears his shoulder and his professional football career ends there. This does not sound like a story related in any way to the world of contemporary art. But then, not everyone is Ryan McCann.

Based in Los Angeles, McCann is a classic example of a hardworking citizen: actor, writer, and artist. It is his practice as an artist that has, of late, drawn the most attention. McCann has visibly reinvigorated Pyrography, the art of burning wood into forms and subjects. Few practicing artists approach the medium, at the risk of dipping into the pool of crafts or even carpentry. The art, itself, may be traced as far back as prehistory—when humans took the remains of their fires and applied it towards image-making. It is known to have existed in Ancient Egypt and is actively defined in Chinese folklore as a high form of art during the Western Han Dynasty two millennia ago. Currently, the form has somewhat filed into the ranks of homemade endearments and folk arts, considering its immense time-consumptiveness and difficulty in the degree of consistent production. McCann has taken these elements into account and persists in generating a steady stream of studio work as well as a line of reproductions on archival paper. Gradually, he increased his exposure to the sphere of contemporary art and was introduced to the Black Square Gallery in Miami, sparking (pun intended) a career that has impressed buyers and art professionals alike. McCann was recently interviewed by ESPN, un-ironically, regarding his ostensibly quick ascent through the heavy beginnings of an emerging artist and is a featured speaker at the TEDxOrangeCoast conference in early October.

Beyond his technique and workmanship in mark-making on the surface of the wood, McCann subscribes to a crossover Pop Art-Conceptual sensibility addressing political and cultural tropes circling back to the art world, itself. His newest series Death To… depicts a range of globally recognizable artists being murdered either by an outside force or some strange incarnation of their own making. One in particular, Death To Koons, inches further towards the literal by showing a Frankenstein-like creature (which, in fact, is McCann himself wearing a Halloween mask) violently drowning the artist in the tub housing his 1985 work, Two-Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J. Silver Series, Wilson Aggressor). Some might call it a gesture of jealousy, an envious smirk at the artists’ leviathan public relations machine, and his own persona as a practicing studio artist making no apologies for his financial success. McCann, though, appears to be taking his own recent accomplishments in stride, and arguably, sees no fault in reaping the fiscal rewards. Far from established, but past the infantile stage of self-doubt within an artist’s lifetime, McCann acknowledges a healthy fascination with the top shelf of contemporary art and how it is, inevitably, self-serving in its intellectual and monetary purposes. He capably deprecates himself in the process, noting how impossible it would appear for a ‘jock’ to effortlessly sashay into the likes of venues such as Frieze New York, Art Basel Miami Beach, LACMA, MOCA (Los Angeles) and any number of galleries within that echelon. As for artists currently influencing his state of mind, “Ed Ruscha and Ragnar Kjartansson at MOCA North Miami was something very powerful for me,” he recalls. “What I enjoyed about Frieze New York was that it was such a first-class fair. It was like when I put on the uniform with the Bengals in Cincinnati: I felt like ‘I’m here. I’m in it.’ To see Ai Weiwei’s work in person was very special.”

Ryan McCann, Bert Calm, 2012. Blowtorch on carved wood, 33 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

McCann considers varying forms of stereotypes, prejudices and tensions in his work; revolving ideals of beauty versus ugliness, fame versus anonymity, and talent versus loafing. Figures including Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Mike Tyson, Frank Sinatra, Mickey Mouse, President Obama and even Bert and Ernie have all played starring roles in the work. It would come as no surprise that McCann would recall elements from his sports background: McCann has created special commissions for the New Orleans Saints (after their 2009 Super Bowl win) and for UCLA Coach John Wooden’s memorial service in 2010, but that world has come and gone. “That part of my life is already done: I’m entrenched in the art world, and that’s what I focus on versus sports,” he notes.

When completed, each of McCann’s works are smoothly sanded and lightly varnished, blurring the perception between a wooden and fabric canvas. The content is remarkably simple, acting like ciphers of Pop culture rather than conceptual exercises. What distinguishes McCann from his peers, in the vein of the defiant young urbanite, is that accessing the works are easy while understanding its larger socio-political innuendoes are far more involved than they let on. He taps into technology gaffes, racial slurs, irresponsible living and unclean histories. What he lacks as an art historian (in terms of communicating the messy genealogy of classical and popular aesthetic standards), he compensates for with sheer tongue-in-cheek humor. McCann’s awareness of his quasi-intellectual pursuit is one that he embraces wholly: a trait that has gone missing from the practices of so many working artists. Rather than manufacture his own version of visual art, McCann slings arrows at the existing paradigms laden with false promises and arrogant claims of penetrating artistic vision. While nothing is safe nor sacred in McCann’s often-sardonic lexicon, the sheer nature of his work lends itself to one not to be taken all that seriously. A sense of ‘acceptance’ into the social circles contemporary art is one, which McCann does aim for, so he opts for the path of greatest resistance. A medium that quickly falls prey to ‘serious’ conceptual artists is one which McCann controls with a high level of technical knowledge. At day’s end, McCann’s greatest weapon is his commitment to quality production and a consistent message simultaneously conveying subjects of folk and fantastic backgrounds. Typically, ‘burning wood’ is a gesture of destruction or one that ensures basic survival in the wild: for Ryan McCann, burning wood is an active process revealing something new.