Michael Jones McKean
Photo by Brad Ogbonna
Michael Jones McKean’s work explores the boundaries of theater, folklore, science, anthropology, technology, and mysticism.
His complex installations and delicate sculptural tableaus use expansive yet specific orderings of materials, processes, and objects to construct dense narrative spaces both real and represented. McKean’s work engages his interest in timescale and its collapse. By presenting contemporary objects using the language of artifact display, McKean upsets reliable definitions of real and replica, natural and synthetic, employing media as diverse as ancient meteorites, primitive textiles, obsolete technologies, psychotropic medicines, and prismatic rainbows.
Richmond, VA
Born 1976, Truk Island, Micronesia
2002 MFA Alfred University, Alfred, NY
2000 BFA Marywood University, Scranton, PA