Campbell McLean: War-Birds & Adverts

Frame 301 Gallery

July 13 - October 3

Closing Reception: Saturday, October 3rd, 12- 2 PM (at 301 Cabot Street)

 

“War-birds & adverts dance across my screen – like the birds of paradise.

Mechanical marvels of stolen avian secrets. Ailerons and fuselage.

Their hollow bones will be broken and poisoned by beasts created in their image.”

                                                                                                            -Campbell McLean

 

Campbell McLean explores her queer-American experience by creating caricaturist paintings, objects, installations, and videos. From oil on canvas, papier-mâché to found object, McLean’s unique aesthetic approach shines through in her sporadic ‘make-due’ energy that flows seamlessly between 2D and 3D forms. The resulting works are immersive and modular series and installations that read as both specific and universalizing, personal and relatable.

 

In War-Birds & Adverts, the artist’s installation for the 301 Frame Gallery, McLean incorporates themes of patriotism, camp, nostalgia, and caricature as a generalized and vague criticism of the time and space we are living in now. Campbell’s use of humor and the appropriation of a thinly veiled spectacle, seek to critique a multitude of cultural and contemporary concerns, including, isolation, screen time, self-commodification, sloganeering, sex, death, war, ‘the art market’. As McLean comments, “Can I really not talk about that terrible ‘thing’ at an institutional gallery?” How are the birds doing? Didn’t you hear?! It’s all for sale! Call my gallerist! 978 495 6697.

 

Campbell-Lynn McLean is a Boston-based artist and a 2022 graduate from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) BFA program. McLean is currently pursuing her MFA in painting at Boston University, Class of 2027. She has received numerous awards and scholarships in recognition of her works, including the Stephen D. Paine Scholarship in 2021, the George Nick Award in 2022, and the Joseph Ablow Memorial Prize in 2026. Since 2024, she has presented a solo exhibition, included in three group exhibitions, and two art fairs with LaiSun Keane, Boston, MA.