Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “Dear John” – Lina McGinn’s absorbing and ostensibly playful solo show of sculptures at the expansive Europa Gallery in the Two Bridges neighborhood – manifests fine technique and a conceptual sensibility deeper than it might first appear. Using fiberglass resin and polymerized gypsum to isolate and fix discarded and distressed cardboard boxes in a range of anthropomorphic poses, she achieves something quite familiar in art – the personification of inanimate objects – in a singularly inventive way.
Her work is decidedly reductive, even minimalist, and not as confrontational as, say, Dali, or as obvious as Gilbert Legrand. Abstracted from the Craigslist Missed Connections synopses that serve as their titles, pieces like Drummer from Florida (maybe in another life), Phone rapport, and Demon Copperhead capture the paradoxical durability of fleeting, day-to-day frissons and traumas. They are cast as phenomena that literally collapse yet still stick with us. Given the title of the show’s allusion to the grim karma of the classic breakup letter, McGinn’s guiding insight could be that people channel their lives through things they use – other people as well as purchased items – leaving shapes altered and spaces empty as they proceed.
It’s a quaint conceit, tidy enough in itself, and here it acquires weight through mutual interaction and reinforcement. Depending on your attitude, the installation, as an existential metaphor, could be a party, a battlefield, or a haunting combination of both – the “grand parade” (cue The War on Drugs’ aching tune In Reverse) that at once links and severs us all. While the high sheen McGinn generates on her surfaces might for a second summon Jeff Koons or cherry muscle cars, she is not terribly interested in irony-crushing perfection, on the one hand, or bald nostalgia, on the other. It’s the psychic wear-and-tear of life that really grabs her.
The crumpled yellow-and-blue vessel on the nowadays dance floor is melancholy, the elegantly slanted Woman in a green jacket on the Brooklyn bound 4/5 train on Friday night hopeful, and the plangently awkward square I’m Not John resigned. In the scheme of life, each mindset is valuable and has its place. From that vantage, “Dear John” is ultimately about the wistfulness inherent in the passage of time, thematically in line with Whitney Claflin’s bracingly sardonic memorialization of evanescence in her current solo exhibition I was wearing that when you met me at MoMA PS1. McGinn renders new objects from found ones, to be sure, but they are poignantly freighted with old feelings that can’t be thrown away.
“Lina McGinn: Dear John,” Europa, 125 Division Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY. Through July 13, 2025.
Also on view: “Colin Brant: Phantom Ship,” Through July 13, 2025.
About the author: Jonathan Stevenson is a New York-based policy analyst, editor, and writer, contributing to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Politico, among other publications, and a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
Interesting piece on an interesting show. But looking at the images and reading your text, I wonder why you didn’t bring up the Angela de la Cruz, Carol Bove and Franz West connection. It would have been very informative to have a sense of how Mc Ginn relates to that strand of work in sculpture. Also, a few lines on her use of color would have been welcome. Thanks.
Maybe you could tell us what YOU think is important about the artists you mentioned. Also curious about what strikes you as notable about the color. I see a connection with the playful work of Carl D’Alvia (slumping, kneeling, etc) rather than those other artists. Franz maybe.
I actually saw the show and don’t think any of those artists are sufficiently akin to Lina McGinn to warrant mention.