HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY is pleased to present, The Night Watch, Matt Kenny’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. This exhibition includes 3 tube paintings and a sculpture that reveal Kenny’s hasty decline into paranoid delusion. Colored by a jaundiced view of the present state of the American political system and the spastic media that covers it, Kenny has been reduced to monosyllabic fringe political activity on the far margins of social relevance. Spinelessly eluding right and left politics for an ideology of early 20th century utopian “thinking,” Kenny offers not a third or fourth alternative but quite possibly a tenth option in the blind pursuit of a legible framework with which to respond to mass hysteria. Inspired by President George W. Bush’s audio recording sessions for his memoir, ‘Decision Points,’ Kenny seeks to establish a new political baseball cap company. Larval creative ideas blossom into national phenomena. Kenny hopes this idyllic trajectory lands his caps a spot on political merch tables across the nation. 

Matt Kenny (born 1979) earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The National Exemplar, Karma and Derek Eller Gallery and 55 Gansevoort in New York. Recent group exhibitons include Interiors, with Aaron Aujla, Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, ON; American Sculpture, The National Exemplar, Urbanities, James Fuentes, New York, NY; Ghost Current, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denark; Teste, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy.