“Currently, I have three avenues of work. Everything-bagel, liminal and found object paintings.
The Everything-Bagel paintings are like sandboxes- allowing unfettered, a-critical spontaneity in their making. They are maximalist-like with a density of cultural, societal, historical, personal mash-up of ideas, narratives, animals, monsters, hybrids, feelings and commentary, solidified in layered dream like imagery. The humored, sardonic, political, non-political, critical work of Canadian-American painter Philip Guston slightly nurtured this work into being, perhaps.
The Liminal paintings are minimal, spacious, suggestive and open ended. A mishmash of interior and exterior amalgamation. Making them is like coming up for air and space after being tossed around in the sea-mess and struggle of the Everything Bagel paintings.
The writer, Rebecca Solnit’s elaboration on the word “instar,” in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, fits well with the Liminal painting series. “Instar implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far.” The Liminal paintings are situational possibilities, for us.
Perhaps the liminal paintings are cosmic ish, with their eerie, undefined, otherness and their personal rules of physics. They are their own zones, a place, that is concurrently, a non-place, not philosophically too dissimilar from the “ZONE” in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker.
The found object paintings use a variety of manufactured goods as media and content. Much like Japanese Ikebana flower arrangement, I am searching for a visual harmony with these paintings. A balance. However, I reimagine the dirty, ordinary, and iconic materials into pretty, seductive and gross arrangements that express our entanglements, hopeful to defamiliarize us from their norm, into new possibilities and meanings.
Film, a fourth renegade category, less defined but consistent over the years.”
Ian Torres McLaughlin grew up in Chicago Illinois. He’s participated in a number of projects including, Marc Chagall’s “Four Seasons” restoration project, The Chicago Cultural Center’s Tiffany-stained glass dome restoration project, and been on art installation teams at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum. His art has shown in Boulder Colorado, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, and Kansas City.
EDUCATION
- 2021 MFA, Painting, Cranbrook Academy of Art
- 2002 BFA, Painting, The Kansas City Art Institute
SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS
- 2021 House-Trained, Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2020 Google, Boulder CO, (canceled covid-19)
- 2018 Messinger Gallery JCC, Boulder, Colorado
- 2017 Alternative Facts, Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2016 Colorado Ballet, Denver CO
- 2016 Love Bombs, 530 Sante Fe Dr, Denver, Colorado
- 2015 Nature’s Line, Space Gallery,Denver, Colorado
- 2013 Mind over Matter , Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2010 Synesthesia for the Times, Living Room Gallery, Chicago, IL
SELECT GROUP SHOWS & PROJECTS
- 2022 Risky Business, Firehouse Art Center, Longmont Colorado
- 2022 Might Real Queer Detroit, Collected Detroit, Detroit, Michigan
- 2021 Graduate Degree Exhibition, Cranbrook Art Museum, Michigan
- 2021 Speculative Histories, Saarinen House, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan
- 2020 Fresh Paint, Painting Dpt, Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
- 2020 Second Year MFA show, Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
- 2019 Pearl Street Project, Boulder Creative Collective, Boulder, Colorado
- 2019 Grand Open Space Gallery Annex, Denver, Colorado
- 2017 Best of, Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2016 Winter Show, Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2016 Longmont Front Range Film Festival, Firehouse Art Center.
- 2014 End of Year Best of, Space Gallery, Denver Colorado
- 2014 Space Gallery New Building Grand Opening, Denver, Colorado
- 2013 Total Abstraction, Republic Plaza, Denver, Colorado
- 2013 Summer Show, Space Gallery, Denver, Colorado
- 2012 Winter Invitational, Buena Suerte a los Compañeros, Telephonebooth Gallery, Kansas City, MO
- 2010 Sonar Donkey-Deer Days music, Rogers Park Peoples Radio, Chicago IL
- 2010 Sonar Donkey-Deer Days, shown at US Social Forum, Detroit, Michigan
- 2010 Dharma Art, Chicago, IL
- 2008 Around The Coyote Spring Show, Chicago, IL
- 2008 Bubble Burst Time, d/vision gallery, Chicago, IL
- 2002 Kansas City Art Institute BFA Show, H & R Block Art Space, Kansas City, MO
- 2002 Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee, Kansas City, MO
- 2002 Treehouse Meeting, Kelvin Gallery, Kansas City, MO
- 1998 The Opie Gallery, Kansas City MO
PRESS
- ·2020 Barbed Magazine, Spring 2020, Detroit
- ·2017 Review: Layered Takes in Alternative Facts at Space Gallery, Denver Westword
- ·2014 Earls Restaurant on the 16th Street Mall Gets sleek new renovation, Denver Post
- ·2013 Review of Mind over Matter show at Space Gallery, Westword Denver
- ·2013 Interview with Ian McLaughlin, Gaurdian Stewardship Editions
- ·2011 Studio Visit Magazine, Vol 16
- ·2010 Chicago Art Magazine
AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS
- ·2021 Cranbrook Academy of Art: President’s Award for Sustainability
- ·2002 Kansas City Art Institute: Graduated on the Deans List
- ·1998 Kansas City Art Institute: Scholarship
- ·1998 The Chicago Academy for the Arts: Humanitarian Award
- ·1996 The Chicago Academy for the Arts: Polk Brothers Foundation scholarship
- ·1994 The Chicago Academy for the Arts: Scholarship