Gallery Paule Anglim Installation wall snapshot

The article "Artist stays street savvy / Barry McGee's urban images reflect his tagger roots" by Jesse Hamlin -a Chronicle staff writer- describes the beginning process of McGee's installation in the Paule Anglim Gallery. In the Article, McGee was in the process of painting his trademark urban images (the beautiful cartoonish figures) and signature booze bottles on the first bare wall of the room. "I've got to make some big moves on some of these walls, because they're oppressive to me now. They're white and they're perfect," McGee later said. At his artistic roots, McGee's artwork became more apparent then the man himself. "Twisted" and anonymous street art appeared spontaneously on the streets of San Francisco in the 1980's. McGee was also one of the first street artists who made the transition between the street world and the gallery world, to make street art...in doors.

The typically white coated "everymen" appear not only on the streets, but used over and over again. He claims the reason for carrying a similar style in both worlds, is to keep a constant theme through out anything he does. The idea behind these characters are to create a community, "patchworks of modern societ of some sort. It's like a community. I like putting things together, where one thing relates to the next, all these little bits of scraps and stuff. Maybe it's not the most majestic community, but it's a community of sorts." The idea of having these figures out in the world for everyone to see, interests him more than having the same 150 people viewing his installations. He claims anyone can catch a glimpse of his work if its outside, those who hustle to their jobs every morning, to "someone calmly going through the garbage. I like all these things moving around at any given moment. If you could slice the city right down the center and stop it for a second, I think that's what I would love to be able to capture."

"If I could get the respect of 14-year-olds, I'm happy. They're the toughest audience."

http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-05-02/entertainment/17543614_1_barry-mcgee-walls-bottles