GEOFF MCFETRIDGE
Outside Experience
Artist Reception: Friday, March 22nd, 6-8 PM
March 22nd - April 20th, 2024
Before embarking on a new body of work, Geoff McFetridge often sits down at his typewriter: hunting and pecking out recent thoughts. The arms get stuck jumbling the letters or repeating others. Geoff projects some measure of animism - agency - on his word machine which elevates the typewriter to a kind of collaborator. This time around, McFetridge’s fourth exhibition at half gallery since 2011, the artist imagined people disrobing but instead of being naked underneath, they revealed another layer of clothing. It’s almost like peeling away the onion to find more onion below the surface. Geoff McFetridge himself feels closer to an artichoke - pull away the many meaty leaves until you arrive at the heart of things.
Geoff continues to produce his unique brand of visual metaphysics, reflecting us back to each other. “Outside Experience” considers pursuits without evident externalized action, how the mind jogs between entry and exit. The option of infinity can be its own kind of oblivion. To consider a proposition finite is not speaking to its increasing scarcity, but rather a parameter to help lend concepts clarity. Nature is nature and humans are nature, too. We come from other bodies and we carry people close to us in our heads.
Geoff McFetridge (b. 1971, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), received his BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. McFetridge was part of the infamous Beautiful Losers exhibition which debuted in downtown New York in 1991 and went on to tour the world. He has continued to exhibit in international galleries including Cooper Cole, Toronto; Half Gallery, New York; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen; Gallery Target, PlayMountain, Tokyo; and Heath Gallery, Los Angeles. McFetridge has also been included in museum exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Contemporary Calgary, Calgary; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Yale University Art Museum, New Haven; Museum of African American Art (MAAA), and The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA; Los Angeles. McFetridge currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA.