Sam McKinniss Recollects Celebrities in Their Golden Age at JTT

With his most recent show at JTT in the Lower East Side, New York-based Sam McKinniss explores figuration painting by memorializing iconic celebrity subjects. In the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery, he brought with him a plethora of comedic relief and irony, injecting his own quirky humor into the space. His sense of humor here relies on Shakespearean “twinship and mistaken identity as plot devices or themes.” These works are not simply Google image stills, but rather his own interpretation of the effects of fame from a young age and what that means to the individual.

Installation view, 2020
Courtesy of the artist, JTT, and Almine Rech.
Photography by Charles Benton.

This is obviously evident in the depiction of famous twins, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, and the image of Lindsay Lohan as twins Annie and Hallie from The Parent Trap. These celebrities were all scouted at a young age and have lived their lives in the public eye for years. McKinniss seems to question how that has impacted them off screen, using an image of Lindsay Lohan again as a disheveled driver smoking a cigarette in Lindsay (below) years after her role as the two ginger sisters. Most likely embroiled in one controversy or another, Lohan looks a far cry from the innocent, young twins in Hallie and Annie.

She was a young star who grew up involved in scandal after scandal. What does it mean that this image was so easily accessible online? McKinniss attempts to relate both stages of this celebrity’s career to her entire public persona and, as a viewer, you can’t help but compare the two images yourself. She can be both types of people portrayed, while at the same time being completely different than what we may have come to expect. The use of this source material is not patronizing or critical, but rather sentimental. Arguably, we all remember Lindsay in her role in The Parent Trap, but we can’t pretend to not remember her once she grew up and scenes like the above were splattered across tabloids.

Quite literally, these paintings are duplicates of a celebrity’s likeness. Going further, people attempt to mimic celebrities all the time, creating a twin in the literal sense. Yes, celebrities might be just like us, but that doesn’t stop you and a friend from excitedly pointing a famous person out at the grocery store. There’s “an alter-ego transference” when you see Hailey Bieber wearing a red top and you go and find the same one for yourself. You are compelled to feel a strong likeness to her because of her fame. McKinniss takes these figures out of context and presents it to us for our own interpretation.

Installation view, 2020
Courtesy of the artist, JTT, and Almine Rech.
Photography by Charles Benton.

At the forefront of McKinniss’s exhibition is a portrait of Jonathan Taylor Thomas as a youth, the child star for which the show is entitled. In the installation images, you recognize celebrities including Justin Bieber, Serena Williams, and even viral stars of pop culture today such as Mason Ramsey (of Walmart yodeling fame). Using humor is one of McKinniss’s strengths in his combination of beauty and absurdity.

Installation view, 2020
Courtesy of the artist, JTT, and Almine Rech.
Photography by Charles Benton.

The above is the artist’s most recent endeavor. These fifty colored pencil drawings on paper, titled Wild America after the 1997 teen adventure film starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, cover everything from abstraction to still life to portraiture to figuration. In each one, though, a charming rendition of subjects shows signs of his tell-tale playfulness.