Medrie MacPhee
[7][8][9][10] In later work, she explored architectural instability before turning to semiotically dense canvases combining compartments of color and collaged pieces of garments fit together like puzzles, which New York Times critic Roberta Smith described as "powerfully flat, more literal than abstract" with "an adamant, witty physicality.
[26][31][32][33] Despite her work's range, critics have identified several unifying themes: an anthropomorphizing impulse that examines how the built and machine worlds mirror psychological states; interest in processes of disintegration, metamorphosis or evolution; exploration of the past as a pointer to the future; open-ended meaning; and humor.
[27][23][3] The paintings emphasized draftsmanship—with lines and hard edges defining large modeled volumes—as well as varied surfaces of dry, scraped areas, thin turpentine washes and sewn-on canvas, dramatic shifts between close-ups and vast expanse, and chiaroscuro lighting evoking a poignant, forlorn quality.
"[27][23][3] Critics made comparisons to the somber metaphysical works of Giorgio de Chirico and Edward Hopper and visionary scenes of Piranesi, reading these paintings as metaphors for the female body, nature or human development (e.g., Self-Portrait in the Mountains, 1986; Frida’s Garden, 1990), which examined relationships between man and machine, obsolescence, survival and the exhaustion of modernist utopianism.
[23][27][30][28] Art in America's Robert Berlind wrote that MacPhee "invert(ed) the post-Cubist tradition of abstracted, machine-like figuration," finding life, sexuality and "the pathos of extinction" in industrial relics (e.g., Dinosaurs and Siamese Twins, 1987).
[8][39] Critics suggested the series conveyed a sense of social disintegration and eclipsed functionality, as well as new possibility;[39][40][37] Karen Wilkin likened its fragility and lyricism to da Vinci's diagrammatic machine drawings, which mix engineering, anatomical and botanical elements.
[9][24][41] The series recombines her vocabulary into visceral, hybrid forms such as bellows, riveted cones, spindles, hoops and organs, set in vague, garishly colored vistas, often amid tubes suggesting blood vessels (e.g., Hot Spot and Chop Suey, 1998).
[6][2][22] Critics described them as destabilizing, irrational, hybridized approximations of reality whose meaning was obscure; for example, Treasure Island (2006) suggests something more like a platform, hovering over a swimming pool or lake of half-built structures and an unexplained clutter of spools, planks, frames and cloth.
[6][36] In her exhibition "What It Is" (2010), MacPhee piled the shapes and futuristic species of earlier works en masse in large, dense paintings that Christina Kee of Artcritical described as colliding, overlapping scenes of barely controlled, abstract/figurative abundance pushed to a point of compositional near-breakdown (e.g., Float 2009; Big Bang 2010).
[46][1] Sharon Butler wrote that while the paintings can appear to be purely formal, abstract investigations of shape and line, MacPhee's aesthetic choices and creative destruction of once-utilitarian items reveal social themes of instability, danger and collective despair.
