Associate Professor
Michael Jones McKean’s (b. Micronesia, lives/works Chesterfield, Virginia) work explores the nature of objects in relation to folklore, technology, anthropology and mysticism. His work engages an interest in deep time, timescales and their collapse, in the process decentering anthropocentric registrations of events, distances and meaning. Through his working process, McKean challenges stable definitions such as real and replica, natural and synthetic, past and future, employing media as diverse as ancient meteorites, primitive textiles, of the moment technologies, raw clay, psychotropic medicines and prismatic rainbows.
Michael Jones McKean is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Nancy Graves Foundation Award and an Artadia Award. He has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The MacDowell Colony, The International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City, The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York City.
McKean’s work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York: Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Parc Saint Leger Centre d’art Contemporain, Nevers, France: Horton Gallery, New York, New York; The Quebec Biennale, Quebec City, Canada; Gentili Apri, Berlin, Germany; The Art Foundation, Athens, Greece; Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas; Parisian Laundry, Montreal, Canada; Project Gentili, Prato, Italy; Shenkar University, Tel Aviv, Israel; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, among many others.
McKean earned his Master of Fine Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2002. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 2000. He has taught in VCU’s Sculpture and Extended Media Program since 2006.