McDermott & McGough. Cyan Light And Abstract

M77 Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Cyan Light And Abstract by David McDermott & Peter McGough. The exhibition, specially produced for the interiors of M77 Gallery, is the third show in Italy dedicated to the two American artists. After their European debut in 1986 at Lucio Amelio’s gallery in Naples, and about two decades after the show at the Gian Ferrari gallery in Milan, David McDermott (Hollywood, California, 1952) and Peter McGough (Syracuse, New York, 1958) return to Milan with their exhibition concept Cyan Light and Abstract.

Comprising photographic pieces and paintings, the show is the largest recent panorama of works by the two artists, who are familiar to an international audience for their characteristic method and artistic language. While using various means of expression, such as photography, painting and sculpture, with a variety of techniques and supports, their work is hallmarked by the concept of a different, alternative temporal dimension. Elegant, sophisticated and erudite, with an exquisitely dandy approach that nonetheless detracts nothing from the depth of their work, McDermott & McGough met in New York in 1980.

From then, both in art and in their lives, they have been conducting a series of “experiments” on time, as can be seen from the back-dating of their works in accordance with the scenes depicted, revealing a distant and lost style, and reflecting their desire to have nothing in common with the contemporary world, neither with the future, two dimensions of time that they consider have no beauty at all. «I have looked into the future and I have no intention of going there», said David McDermott in the conversation that he, with Peter McGough, had with Michele Bonuomo, published in the catalogue (in a bilingual edition with texts in Italian and English) of the works on show. The past dimension of time – expanded, re-experienced, brought back to new life, and considered as the custodian of an ideal beauty that has not been contaminated by contemporary banality – becomes the narrative voice and the expressive mode of their identity. The romantic rediscovery of a time that still has a lot to tell is narrated by the emotions of ten gouache paintings. This time, the subjects are lines, which develop an intricate network: geometric painting is absorbed and becomes part of a gestural experience.