Suzanne McClelland

Through painting, drawing, printmaking, and artist books, Suzanne McClelland (b. Jacksonville, FL) examines the visual, semantic, and acoustic dimensions of language, parsing the limitations and malleability of communication, the impact of technology on interpreting information, and the mechanics of translation. 

 

McClelland translates language into painting: characters and symbols appear at varying levels of legibility, overheard words captured mid-sentence and chunks of data extracted from the set trail off into nothingness. Removed from their context, these fragments of information tumble, spiral, swirl, float, and dance across canvases, mingling with abstract gestures. The language she incorporates throughout her works derives from a host of sources: from overheard conversations, 90s rap, financial data, terrorism watchlists, and newspaper headlines, among others. McClelland experiments with nontraditional materials, incorporating—at various times—photography, dye transfer, collage, wire mesh, house paint, drywall, spackle and cardboard into what art historian Thierry de Duve dubbed “combine collages,” in reference to Robert Rauschenberg’s combines of the 1950s and 60s.

 

Throughout her practice, McClelland draws on the influences of both conceptualism and expressionism; her examinations of language and power are as much in conversation with the work of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger as her formal preoccupations with line and color are with the work of Cy Twombly. Infusing her largely expressionistic work with social and political commentary, McClelland underscores the ways in which language itself is gendered and politicized by its context, the ways it is manipulated by its interlocutors, and the ways its uses and meanings morph across time and space.

 

McClelland’s work has been exhibited extensively since the early 1990s. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY; the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; and the Orlando Museum of Art, FL, among others. Her work was included in the 1993 and 2014 Whitney Biennials, and she has been included in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New  York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY. McClelland is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and a Nancy Graves Foundation Grant; and she has participated in international residencies, most recently the Troedsson Villa Residency in Nikko, Japan in 2019. Her work is held in numerous public collections including that of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; the Walker Art Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. McClelland earned an MFA at the School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY and a BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. McClelland lives and works in Brooklyn and Orient, NY.