The artist Sam McKinniss made his name painting portraits of celebrities downloaded from the Internet. These meditations on fandom and parasocial relationships—the cast of Cruel Intentions, a skeletal Joan Didion, an adolescent Leonardo DiCaprio—have turned him into a kind of oracle of millennial angst. Now, the artist’s latest exhibition is tackling a different kind of public obsession: law breakers and law enforcers.
The show, “Law and Order” at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York, captures figures ranging from “Hot Felon” Jeremy Meeks to Luigi Mangione to the (formerly incarcerated) art dealer Mary Boone as played by Parker Posey in the 1996 film Basquiat. McKinniss also includes a painting of Alcatraz, the California prison turned tourist attraction that President Donald Trump is seeking to turn back into a prison.
“We are subject to new forms of tyranny from the vantage of a wholly untenable worldview,” McKinniss writes in his exhibition proposal, which has been repurposed as the show’s press release. “The work of ‘Law and Order’ is to locate, trace, and otherwise describe the parameters of that topdown worldview.”
Ahead of the show, which opens on Sept. 6, McKinniss invited CULTURED into his studio in Kent, Connecticut, to talk about the unseen forces that shape his art: friends outside the industry, Martha Argerich, and lemon seltzer.
What’s the first thing you do when you enter your studio?
Pace in a circle.
What’s on your studio playlist?
Lately I’m enjoying Blood Orange’s new single, “The Field,” which features the Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek, and Daniel Caesar. This is a song I really believe in. I don’t know how else to express how I feel about it. I’ve been acquainted with Dev Hynes and Caroline here and there over the years. Geniuses. If and when I don’t know what else to listen to, I put on a Martha Argerich album.
What’s in your studio fridge?
Polar brand seltzer, lemon flavored.
If you could have a studio visit with one artist, dead or alive, who would it be?
Claude Monet, for gardening advice.
What’s the weirdest tool or instrument you can’t live without?
My iPhone, unfortunately, but its days are numbered.
When do you do your best work?
I work all the time. Typically I have a brush in hand from 9:45 a.m. until 4:30 or 5 p.m. I break for the midday meal, of course. The best brushwork arrives at around 11 a.m. or noon, however, which is frustrating since then it’s only a matter of minutes before lunchtime, which is mandatory because I share that with Michael Londres, with whom I live. We see each other first thing in the morning, at meals, evenings, and on days off.
I’m best at writing emails and notes to myself over morning coffee. I reflect at night with a bourbon or several. I dream overnight, which I then try to remember in order to have something to discuss with my analyst. My best small talk gets done when I am invited to parties in town or sometimes the country, but I talk less in Connecticut, a blessed relief. I am not as funny if I am hosting the party, I’ve noticed. I’m too preoccupied with the menu and table linens.
Who’s the first person you show something to?
I participate daily in a group chat with three other men I’ve been friends with for at least the past decade. We used to live near one another in Greenpoint, but that isn’t so anymore. The chat is called Sex Addicts (as well as alcoholics) Anonymous, because you can label certain things in iMessage to a relatively high degree of specificity, I guess. I have no idea what any of these guys do for a living, but we talk everyday and we’re all really good at it.
They receive first glimpse of my works-in-progress. We’ll be texting about something else before I interrupt with a pic from my studio, if for no other reason than to get a quick “yes” or “no.” It’s kind of like quality control from people I trust, who are not professionally involved in the contemporary art world in any way where I would have to worry about it.
Do you work with any assistants or do you work alone?
I work alone. I had two assistants when I was working in Brooklyn, one after the other, but I remember some difficulty after a while coming up with things for them to do worth paying for. Mine is quite literally a cottage industry. I know how to sweep the floor.
Is there a studio rule you live by?
Go there all the time and let it make you feel crazy and stupid. Take a 10-minute break when you are crazy or stupid. Drink a glass of water. Wash brushes at the end of the day and throw out the frayed and the dead. Replace brushes semi-annually.
If your studio were an animal, what would it be?
A hummingbird.
in your life?
