Pop-Up Exhibition Chris McGinnis

Chris McGinnis grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania during the waning years of post-war industrial America. Shortly after he was born the steel mills closed and the coal industry consolidated. As a child of the 1980s McGinnis developed romantic notions of America’s industrial past. The ruins of a 19th century tannery, located near his family cabin on the Clarion River in Elk County Pennsylvania and hidden amongst the dense overgrowth were the backdrops for his childhood reveries. Like an effigy to the impermanence of industrial progress, rectangular mounds of dirt and moss supplant the solid railroad ties that once transported hides to and from that tannery.

As both artist and curator, McGinnis’ research continually returns to notions of growth and decline relating to technology and the human experience. Projects inspired by this research chronicle the pursuit of progress and its effect on all facets of society, ranging from industry and community to science and entertainment. Iconography representing the abundance and promise of industrial modernism is reminiscent of a time when American optimism was specifically manifested in large-scale construction and the built environment.

McGinnis earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona in 2010. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with over ten solo exhibitions and over 40 group exhibitions in recent years – including shows at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and University of Arizona Museum of Art. He is co-founder of the ALLOY Pittsburgh arts initiative and will present this project for the 2014 International Arts in Society Conference in Rome, Italy. Chris regularly attends national and international artist-in-residence programs. His work has been published in the National Studio Visit Magazine, European Art Magazine, The MFA Now catalog, Manifest’s International Painting Annual as well as numerous local and university publications including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. As an artist, curator and educator, McGinnis has worked for institutions across the country including Carnegie Mellon University and The University of Arizona. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Director of the University’s Kipp Gallery.