DANIELLE MCKINNEY
Danielle Mckinney’s (b. 1981) interior scenes capture moments of human introspection and intimacy with painterly lyricism. Mckinney builds her compositions from an all-black canvas, resulting in scenes emerging from darkness in chiaroscuro fashion. Like dioramas, these domestic spaces are carefully composed; the artist constructs her interiors with sourced material from magazines or social media. The atmospheric compositions are interspersed with shimmering highlights of colour: the faint glow of a lit cigarette, held by protagonists with brightly coloured lips and fiercely painted fingernails. The figures, exclusively Black and female, are seen cherishing moments of solitude: reading, smoking, or simply lost in contemplation. As a trained photographer, Mckinney arranges her subjects cinematographically, with an astute awareness of the gaze and its political power. Her figures command the space in which they find themselves, opening opportunities for endless narrative strands and self-exploration.
‘Danielle Mckinney’s canvases don’t simply ask to be looked upon. They ask viewers to breathe alongside them, inviting us to inhale and exhale in rhythm with their languid figures and supple layers of paint. Their brushstrokes seem to breathe, too: They are thick yet soft, applied with a looseness and freedom that elicits a meditative air of unburdening. Set in placid interiors, Mckinney’s paintings feature Black women stealing moments of quietude and interiority that solicit a similar stillness from viewers as we slip into the shadows of the canvas.’
Z. Hopkins, ‘In Danielle Mckinney's Lyrical Paintings, Black Women Reclaim Domestic Space,’ in Artsy, 31 October 2022
Image: Table for Two, 2023, oil on linen, 61 x 45.7 cm.; 24 x 18 in. Photo: Nik Massey
Selected Works
Biography
VITA
1981
Born in Montgomery, USA
2005
BFA, Atlanta College of Arts
2013
MFA, Parsons School of Design, New York
Lives and works in Jersey City
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Blenheim Art Foundation, Oxfordshire
Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
Columbus Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Longlati Foundation, Shanghai
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
New Orleans Museum of Art
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin
Speed Art Museum, Louisville
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
Quiet Storm
Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
Fly on the Wall
Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin
2023
Metamorphic
Night Gallery, Los Angeles
2022
Golden Hour
Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
2021
Midnight Oil
Marianne Boesky Gallery, Aspen
Smoke and Mirrors
Night Gallery, Los Angeles
Saw My Shadow
Fortnight Institute, New York
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
On Paper
Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris
2023
Pictures Girls Make”: Portraitures
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
PRESENT '23: Building the Scantland Collection
Columbus Museum of Art
Presence in the Pause: Interiority and its Radical Immanence
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha
So let us all be citizens too, curated by Ebony L. Haynes
David Zwirner, London
Rear View
LGDR, New York
Talk of the Town: A Dallas Museum of Art Pop-Up Exhibition curated, by Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Fair and NorthPark Center
2022
A Different Now is Close Enough to Exhale on You, curated by Bonaventure Ndikung
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town
When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town
In Our Time: Selections from the Singer Collection, curated by Allison Glenn
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY
The Contemporary Austin
Heroic Bodies
Rudolph Tegners Museum and Statue Park, Dronningmølle
Uncanny Interiors
Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York
Black Melancholia, curated by Nana Adusei-Poku
Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
Women Painting Women
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
2021
Reflections: Part 1: Female Figures by Women Artists
Workplace Gallery, New Castle
Black Bodies, White Spaces: Invisibility and Hypervisibility, curated by Aindrea Emelife
Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas
My Secret Garden
Asia Art Center, Taipei
and I will wear you in my heart of heart
Flag Art Foundation, New York
The Lonely Ones, curated by Katelyn Eichwald
Fortnight Institute, New York
Friend Zone, curated by Vaughn Spann
Half Gallery, New York
Selected Press
The New York Times Style Magazine February 2024
Financial Times January 2023
Hyperallergic January 2023
Vogue September 2022
Elephant June 2021
Juxtapoz May 2021
Mousse Magazine May 2021
