Kim MacConnel
Girl from Ipanema, 2010
7724 Girard Avenue
Kim MacConnel's work, The Girl from Ipanema, demands attention with bright color and pattern radiating from an otherwise overlooked building tucked away in an alley. “The building called for a sinuous undulating pattern to offset the structure and the color helps to offset its location in an alley”. MacConnel describes his artwork as an updated Morris Louis “paint fall.”
Kim MacConnel, a seminal figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s, has created a unique visual language, drawing inspiration from wide-ranging and multicultural sources such as textile arts, found graphic images, and Henri Matisse. MacConnel was born in 1946 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He received his BFA and MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and taught in various capacities in the UCSD Visual Arts Department between 1975 and 1980 and as a Professor of Art from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. His fun and playful style incorporates bright color and creative patterning and design. He is known for painting on unconventional materials including fabric and bed sheets.
MacConnel’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture, including furniture, have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Whitney Biennials of 1975, 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1985; the Museum of Ghent, Belgium; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; PS 1, Long Island City; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others. He is featured in many permanent collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. MacConnel lives and works in San Diego, California.
West 48' x 17'
South 48' x 9'
East 6' 8" x 17'
Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann