Sarah McEneaney: When You Wish, 2016
Text by Wendy Vogel
50 pages, Softcover
Published by Locks Art Publications
ISBN: 978-1879173996 $25.00
"McEneaney's pictures, which triangulate her self-portraits in the studio with images of her animals and her neighborhood, depict a self defined in relationship to the world around her – to her city, to her pets, to art history. So to, does McEneaney's collaged viewpoint act as an analog for today's modes of viewing. . . By gaining access to different spaces, McEneaney becomes a kind of anthropologist of her neighborhood. Her views are crisp yet speculative panoramas, blending real and imagined scenes, akin to our experience of the world through digitally manipulated photographs, composite images and architectural renderings." -Wendy Vogel
This fully illustrated catalog includes an essay by Wendy Vogel, an independent curator, critic, and contributing writer to Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, Frieze, and Modern Painters, among others. This is McEneaney's first catalog published by Locks Gallery on the occasion of her recent exhibition, When You Wish (September 1 - October 8, 2016).
McEneaney's new paintings act as mirrors – reflecting her core identity as an artist and activist and continuing her ongoing investigation of autobiography in relation to the shifting cityscape. McEneaney, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has had two previous solo exhibits at Locks Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Happiness, Liberty, Life? American Art and Politics, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2016); About Face: Self Portraiture in Contemporary Art, Hood Museum of Art (2015) and First Look, The Philadelphia Museum of Art (2013). Her work is in museum collections including the Hood Museum of Art, Mills College Art Museum, Neuberger Museum of Art, RISD Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The artist has received multiple awards; including a Chinati Foundation Residency, Yaddo Fellowship, Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and the inaugural residency with the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.
