Kyle McLean: Gain of Function

Kyle McLean’s art-making is multi-pronged, encompassing sculpture and community building primarily through Pond Coffee in the Marigny which he co-owns. With all branches of the practice, Kyle complicates established notions of value and preciousness. In a period of unprecedented social isolation, a quest for community becomes a moving target and an uphill battle. Assembling conscientious interpersonal fellowship can be a radical action, particularly in its capacity to ground us in a sense of collective meaning that gets lost in a digital age. 

The materials for Kyle’s sculptures manifest as gifts from a generous universe–found, thrifted, bartered, or harmlessly stolen. In his own words, the physical media he employs “represent the baked-in violence and waste that comes with constructing, maintaining, and continuing to live in a modern-day city and economy designed around convenience.” Kyle takes walks along the same routes with eyes to the ground for discarded or unnoticed treasures. He spends hours scouring the same thrift stores, carving space for creative action within the minuscule shifts in a small subsection of the world from day to day. Infinities come in all shapes and sizes, and the infinite can exist within the finite if one chooses to dig deeper rather than span wider. Each lamp represents a cross section of luck, happenstance, and discipline; a physical network of materials from a singular place and time.   

At Pond, people find their people and bond over a shared appreciation for art, design, music, and aesthetics. A white wall within the space functions as a gallery hosting small exhibitions by local artists. The mugs and glassware collected on Kyle’s thrifting circuit find their way into the hands of his fervent patrons, many of whom return daily and spend hours chatting or working in what has become a comfortable third space. Kyle hosts regular sidewalk sales that bring together other makers and vendors to engage in commerce on a more wholesome level–person to person, where the money exchanged goes directly towards an individual’s costs of living. With this, Kyle situates himself squarely in conversation with other conceptual artists such as David Medalla, Gordon Matta-Clark, or Rikrit Tiravanjia using social interaction as their medium. Relational aesthetics such as these are about hosting, exchange, in-person social networks, and investigating models of how culture and objects circulate. 

The exhibition’s title refers to a branch of scientific research in which an organism is altered to acquire enhanced abilities or traits. Gain of Function research is most commonly applied to biology or virology. A virus in a lab might be modified to better understand how or why it spreads. This type of research comes with obvious risks and ethical concerns, from biosecurity to viral resistance, and is the subject of a great deal of conspiratorial discourse specifically surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. On a surface level, Kyle’s lamps evoke viral morphology in their unique form, like something grown rather than built—clustered, spiked, assembled from parts that should not cohere and yet do. Thinking about his practice more holistically, Kyle’s sculptures, the coffee shop, the sidewalk sales all demonstrate gain of function at varying scales. With a Midas Touch, Kyle brings the discarded back into circulation and sculpts community in an era of rampant disconnection. 

ABOUT KYLE MCLEAN 

Kyle McLean is an Artist living and working in New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally from Long Island, New York, McLean works in the coffee industry while growing and maintaining the space for his art practice. McLean is critical of the convenience that shapes modern culture and seeks to unpack and reorganize the conversations around agency and responsibility when it comes to the environment. He sees the natural world as a collaborative force and seeks to further explore the relationships between order, disorder, maintenance and decay. 

Prior to Louisiana, McLean lived in New York City where he worked various jobs he describes as “creative-adjacent.” He graduated from Nazareth College in 2011, where he studied Business Administration and Anthropology. McLean has exhibited work at multiple New Orleans galleries including Alone Time Gallery, The Front, The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, Good Children Gallery, and Art Conscious.