Amos Eno Gallery is pleased to present Science Fiction, a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Robert McCann, on view from May 30 to June 23, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 31, 2024, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the gallery’s location at 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn, NY. A catalogue of works will also be available on Artsy.

Robert McCann’s recent works explore the strangeness of contemporary life. His paintings reckon with the fragmented present and the constructed past through an open-ended process of fictional world-building. “Science Fiction” refers to the speculative nature of the current moment, where emergent media and technology conjure what was once fantasy. Science fiction can also describe the double feeling of a mind inside a body, experiencing continuity and change over time.

McCann’s new paintings look outward to current events but are anchored by personal experience. The last few years in which the work was created have seen a gradual, shaky return to normalcy. The work in this show comes out of that psychological environment. The anxiety of being a middle-aged dad to a toddler informs existential themes of vicarious avatars, the fragility of the body, and the invention of the public and private self. Time is another recurring visual idea and essential to the paintings’ gradual realization in the studio.

“This has felt like a moment to jump in and then linger,” McCann says. “The paintings are kind of like writing a message in a bottle and then thinking ‘maybe I’ll put a ship in there.'”

About the Artist
Robert A. McCann is a Michigan-based artist and educator. Born and raised in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, he developed his studio practice through studies at Missouri State University, Indiana University, and as a Fulbright scholar based in Berlin, Germany. McCann’s paintings have frequently dealt with the potential for metaphors in our byzantine mass media culture, and the overwriting of epic and intimate events in the particular artifice of painting. He has exhibited his artwork extensively around the United States, including recent exhibitions at South Bend Museum of Art, Evanston Art Center, Ned & Gloria Griner Gallery at Ball State University, and Davis Gallery at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.  
 
About Amos Eno Gallery
Amos Eno Gallery has been a fixture in the New York art scene since 1974 when it opened in Soho. It has moved with changing arts neighborhoods over the years to land at its current space at 56 Bogart St. in Brooklyn, across from the Morgan Ave. L train stop. The gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. and is run by a small community of professional artists, both from New York City and across the country, and a part-time director. Amos Eno Gallery’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.