Born in Connecticut in 1984, Andi Magenheimer earned her BFA from The School of Visual Arts, NYC and her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited widely in recent years, with solo shows in New York, Los Angeles and London.
Last month I launched a Viewing Room of her work and the response was incredible - from collectors and artists alike. Last week I spent another great afternoon at Andi’s studio, documenting more work. In the Viewing Room I’ve focused on her cowgirl paintings, but recent work dips into art history, folklore, politics and religious iconography.
Her work is always irreverent and witty and idiosyncratic. I really value her ability to paint whatever she is currently consumed by.
Skeleton Bikers Sing a Song of Love, Oil on linen, 46.5 x 61cm
“I gather ideas every morning by looking at quite a wide range of news sources, from the BBC to Huffington Post to the New York Times or the Guardian. That informs my general cynicism! And then I have lots of coffee and I start combining ideas and trying to get, if not happy, then at least to be doing something until I can process it all. At the moment I am interested in skeletons, and I’m trying to push skeletons into being surprising and stupid and funny all at the same time. They are definitely overused as an art trope, not least with the memento mori device, but I think it is interesting to try to have the moment of death be a moment of surprise. People either take it too seriously or not seriously enough and there’s got to be a third way that involves jokes – for example, the animated skeletons in early cartoons.”
The Quietus © Andi Magenheimer 2017
Lightnin Said So, Oil on linen, 41 x 51cm
“There is a sense of faith in her sustained expression and in her restless quest to find a place and a venue. Her life on the internet and in actual spaces give the sense of a presence that also finds some company in Leon Kossoff, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, and Damien Hirst, and perhaps even reaches back to James Dean... Perhaps too she is kindred spirits with Judy Pfaff and Louisa Chase, Joan Brown, Gloria Stettheimer, Kyle Staver, and Katherine Bradford in her spirit of exuberance and playfulness. The dynamism of her appearances in video, online, in exhibitions, has an edgey, searching, thrill-of-the-ride aspect, a kind of on-going Day of the Dead parade, especially in the recent images from Sensei Gallery.
This artist, Andi Magenheimer, in her irreverent sense of humor, in her taking chances, in her quest, and in her creativity, is being herself and she insists (in her persistence and in her need to create) on being someone to be heard and seen.”
ANDI MAGENHEIMER/DUSTY MILLER © Grier Torrence 2018
Pastoral Elegy, Oil on linen, 41 x 51 cm
