They have many ways to measure existence
Time and Science and Literature and Music
And many many numbers 
But the moon still comes up

Moon Over Math Town, Kevin McNamee-Tweed’s first exhibition with Harper’s, features a selection of new ceramic paintings, drawings, and handmade ceramic spoons. With stylistic virtuosity and a dislocated sense of authorship, McNamee-Tweed’s ceramic paintings are at once quotidian and enigmatic. Anchored firmly in the tradition of painting and image-making, the modestly scaled, technically complex works feature vivid surfaces and textures; an image with a heightened corporeal presence. The group of drawings, all pencil on mulberry paper, demonstrate aesthetic and thematic dexterity while plainly celebrating the mechanics of making marks and images. Visual Culture, in these drawings and paintings, is strained to the point of incoherence as the acts of looking and of deciphering replace messaging. 

In the array of handmade ceramic spoons, the artist offers a pivot from pictorial concerns. Using a range of clay bodies, including those dug up from the earth around his home in Iowa City, the collection of spoons signals the importance of experimentation, research, and play in McNamee-Tweed’s practice. The body of work holds firmly to a simple premise and a simple form, yet, in exhausting the language of a spoon, begins to unravel the very definition of what is a familiar, faultlessly utilitarian, and elegant everyday object. Underpinning all the work on view in Moon Over Math Town is a fundamental curiosity about meaning-making—its limits, its depths, its plateaus.

“I am interested in considering the ways in which we measure existence. Always I am looking at science, literature, math, sports, community, romance, self-hood, etcetera as compelling ways of imposing some scale and proportion to what is infinite and unfathomable. I’m trying to think and not think myself through all that. Objects and images are not entirely satisfactory conclusions of such questions but they are perhaps okay examples of what it feels like to be alive. I hope that my work can befriend the staggering and heartbreaking assumptions inherent in any pursuit of understanding / knowledge / whatever but will also articulate an awareness of some very sweet and infinite void.”

– Kevin McNamee-Tweed

Kevin McNamee-Tweed is an artist, curator, and writer based currently in Iowa City, Iowa. Raised in North Carolina, he received a BFA from New York University and an MA and MFA from The University of Iowa. Regularly working across mediums and disciplines, his practice includes exhibitions, books, and interdisciplinary and collaborative projects. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Steve Turner (Los Angeles), Rod Barton (London), Devening Projects (Chicago), The Still House Group (New York), and The Menil Collection Bookstore (Houston). He has participated in group shows in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, Iceland, Greece, and the UK. Reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Artnet, and Glasstire, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Mildred Pelzer Grant, the Willhelm and Jane Bodine Fellowship, The Iowa Arts Fellowship, the Montello Foundation Fellowship, the Bay Space Artist in Residence, and several awards from the Austin Critics Table in Texas. McNamee-Tweed’s extensive publishing history includes dozens of artist books as well as larger, collaboratively produced editions. Most recently, he published Tableaux Vivant, a collection of new poems accompanied by images of recent work and research material, and Steve Turner released Ceramic Paintings, a monograph. In addition to his studio practice, he has worked as a curator for over ten years, both independently and with institutions.