Barry McGee: Hoss
Curator. Consolidated Works, Seattle. March - April 2000
Solo installation (alongside the group exhibition Evidence)
Barry McGee presents his first solo exhibition in the Pacific Northwest, accompanying the larger group show Evidence. His immense wrap-around installation, measuring sixteen feet high by over sixty running feet, was originally produced for Rice University Art Gallery and reworked for this presentation. The installation transforms the gallery into a layered, emotionally charged environment of graffiti tags, biomorphic teardrop shapes, and expressive figurative elements painted against a flat crimson field. McGee intentionally “buffs” portions of the work, painting over his own images and allowing drips to form freely, emphasizing the rawness and impermanence central to graffiti’s ethos. Floating heads with worn, weary expressions evoke the psychic toll of urban life, grounding the work in a quiet despair that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
McGee’s crossover from street to gallery is neither a compromise nor a departure, but an expansion of his commitment to work that interrupts visual expectations and engages public perception. Anchoring Evidence, his installation underscores graffiti not as a marginal footnote but as a vital and evolving form of visual culture. The work embodies the tension between visibility and erasure, chaos and control, rebellion and beauty, inviting audiences to confront assumptions about what art is, where it belongs, and who it is for, while celebrating the dynamic legacy of one of contemporary graffiti’s seminal figures.
About Barry McGee
Barry McGee was born in 1966 in San Francisco, California, where he continues to live and work. He received his BFA in painting and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991. Drawing from his upbringing in the Bay Area, as well as influences such as folk and craft art, Mexican Muralists, geometric abstraction, and cartoons, McGee’s work bridges the formal concerns of fine art with the populist aesthetics and collaborative ethos of street culture. Through drawings, paintings, and immersive mixed-media installations, he has developed a distinctive visual language—one filled with recurring characters, cryptic monikers, and sharp social commentary—that speaks to the alienation and resilience of contemporary urban life. Introduced to graffiti at 18, McGee adopted the moniker “Twist” (and later “Twister,” “Twisty,” and “Twisto”), tagging trains and city walls in muted grays and blacks as a way to resist the privatization of public space. A key figure in the Mission School, he used his work to reflect on issues such as gentrification, homelessness, and commodification, often invoking the question: “Who has access to space?”
As McGee transitioned to exhibiting indoors, he brought the ethos of the street with him, incorporating spray paint, surfboards, tires, and salvaged wood into site-specific installations that reject traditional hierarchies of art-making. His background in printmaking shines through in decorative, geometric motifs, while works like Untitled (2013)—part of his expansive “boil” series—present dense collages of photographs, doodles, and drawings that collectively swell from the gallery walls. These installations, sometimes comprising hundreds of small works, are meant to mimic communities: layered, chaotic, and alive. True to his collaborative roots, McGee often includes the work of others—such as his late wife Margaret Killgallen or fellow street artists—within his exhibitions, challenging conventional notions of authorship and ownership. “It would be doing a big disservice to the Bay Area if this stuff wasn’t here,” he notes. Whether working outdoors or in the gallery, McGee’s practice remains rooted in community, pushing back against exclusionary systems while crafting a visual world both fiercely personal and socially grounded.