David McGee's (born 1962, Bernice, LA) grew up in Detroit, MI, and moved to Texas in the 1980s, where he attended Prairie View A&M University in 1985. He has had solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (Charlotte, NC), The Menil Collection (Houston, TX), Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (Houston, TX), Museum of African American Culture (Houston, TX), The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (Beaumont, TX), The Galveston Art Center (Galveston, TX), and others. His work is featured in numerous permanent collections, including the Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, MI); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA); Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA); The Menil Collection (Houston, TX); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Dallas Museum of Art. McGee lives and works in Houston, TX.
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Encompassing painting, printmaking, watercolor, and drawing, David McGee’s work explores the interplay between image and text to poignantly situate his practice within larger art historical narratives and generative social critiques. Humor, care, and thoughtfulness characterize McGee's practice across media, coupled with an interest in surface, emotion, and drama. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, his work explores a variety of subjects expanding towards the emotional weights of race, language, signs and signifiers, art history, and the recognition of existence, both individual and collective.
