Jason McLean: Mapping the Human MindJason McLean: Mapping the Human Mind Jason McLean’s vibrant acrylic pen drawings explore the uncharted landscapes of the human mind. His playful lines and shapes morph into whimsical creatures and suggestive forms, as if guided by subconscious associations. Influences and Associations McLean draws inspiration from a diverse range of artists, including Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, and Greg Curnoe. His work is also influenced by his personal experiences, including a period of mental illness. McLean’s drawings are a testament to the power of art to externalize and interpret the complexities of the human psyche. Autobiographical Symbolism Beneath the surface of his playful imagery, McLean incorporates private symbolism. For example, “I Went Away For A Little While” reflects on aging and the inevitable passage of time. McLean portrays himself as a series of truncated figures, each representing a different stage in his life. The Receiver-Transmitter McLean sees himself as a receiver-transmitter, channeling his impressions of the world into his art. This is evident in a recent project where he invites anonymous strangers to leave audio recordings on a designated track. The resulting tapestry of voices forms a collective narrative, reflecting the shared experiences and aspirations of humanity. Carnivalesque Vibrations McLean’s drawings exude a carnivalesque atmosphere, with their bright colors and whimsical imagery. He creates a visual playground where reality and imagination intertwine, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the boundless realms of the subconscious.
Jason McLean, I’m As Normal As Blueberry Pie, 2004. Acrylic ink and acrylic paint on paper, 26” x 40”
Jason McLean at the Vanderplas Gallery, New York
By DAVID JAGER July 22, 2024
How do you map the human mind? Jason McLean, who has spent the first half of his career creating topographies of worlds inside and outside his mind, may have an answer. His acrylic pen drawings follow playful tangents, combining bits of text with guides and shapes that occasionally transform into locations, forms, or anthropomorphic creatures at his whim.
The lines are clean and colorful, ranging from sparse improvisatory compositions to overflowing nests of line and color that practically leap off the page. Bits of telegraphic word salad, like concrete poetry, connect the dense associative structures of McLean’s images. His mind and hand work together through free associations that tend to morph into something creaturely or anthropomorphic. Although much of the work is on paper, he can populate any surface with his deft scribble, down to a bicycle parked just outside the gallery door.
In person, McLean retains the lanky profile and restlessly eager energy of an adolescent. Dressed in his baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, it’s hard to believe he’s celebrating mid-career. His smile is warm, and he seems eager to talk about his work. His conversations telegraph bits of information in associative bursts, a name with an experience with an artist, a funny anecdote that triggers a memory. Artist names alternate with dazzling bits of autobiographical information. When I ask him, for example, about the origins of his organic drawing technique, he says:
“I think it started when I was in a hospital ward with a collapsed lung…” McLean says. “That was also the beginning of my brief period with mental illness, things starting to appear and stuff.”
McLean was briefly diagnosed with schizophrenia, but has not had an episode for most of his career. He has since married, fathered two sons, and led a busy life as an artist. All without a single symptom…
Jason McLean, I Went Away for a While, 2003. Acrylic on paper, 29.75” x 41.75”
“I listen to a lot of podcasts while I work,” McLean continues. “Conspiracy theories and supernatural stuff.”
“Art Bell?”
McLean becomes clearer.
“I called his show once! He answered and I was about to say something and he hung up on me. That was my big moment on the Art Bell show.”
A multitude of influences ricochet around in McLean’s lively drawings. There’s the humor and itinerant line of Francis Picabia, the loose, proliferating style of Joan Miróand some comparisons have been made with the neat, logical word-line diagrams of Jean-Michel Basquiat. But McLean is looser and more oozy than Basquiat, there is a melting, soft quality to his associations that differs from Basquiat’s almost aggressively neat and logical constructions. He also enthusiastically cites Greg Curnoe’s mail art as a major influence. McLean is not necessarily looking for direct messages, but to ramble around in the vast experiential arena of his mind. In this sense his work is more of a carnival, less of a polemic.
The brightly colored Candy eyesWith its carnivalesque vermilion, yellow and navy, it looks at once the intersection of a giant, amorphous building and a cross-section of a cartoon creature. There are echoes of his old friend and colleague Marc Bell, who gained an international following with his surreal “Shrimpy and Paul” strips for the now-defunct VICE Magazine. The popular words “Candy,” “Game On” and “Good Time” are written in black, but stand out like billboards. There’s the implication of a city or a Coney Island Midway. But there are also references to “bridges” and “between spaces,” just as the top of the drawing offers a space to “turn around,” flanked by a daisy and a flock of birds in formation above the ocean.
Jason McLean, Candy Eyes, 2024. Acrylic ink on paper 71.5″ x 44.5″
There is a private, autobiographical symbolism at play here. “I Went Away For A Little While” seems to be a meditation on aging and the passage of time. We see several truncated McLeans, colorful cubist slices of former selves that stretch infinitely far back into the past, suggesting that the current McLean is nothing more than a fresh slice from the time continuum. The current McLean has an arrow pointing to his hair that reads “thinning…turning gray.” The current McLean is assaulted by a colorful storm of dollar bills, snakes, grocery orders, kitchen remodeling concerns, and real estate apps. At the bottom is the instruction, “Get to work. Yes, again.”
McLean, whatever the eccentricities of his inner world and the trials of his life as an artist, is a hard-paying bill, like the rest of us, plodding improbably along in the mystery that is now. He functions as a receiver-transmitter of his impressions of himself and the world around him. That explains a recent project included in the show, an antique radio with headphones. It’s a sound piece that plays recordings left by anonymous strangers on a track he’s set aside for that purpose alone. When I ask him what people can talk about, he smiles and says:
“Whatever you think of. Something funny, a poem, a joke, a piece of personal history, a rant or knowledge you want to share. Anything that comes to mind, as long as it lasts less than three minutes.” WM
