Installation view of Kevin McNamee-Tweed: The Weather (March 5-April 1, 2026) at Alexander Berggruen, NY. Photo: Dario Lasagni
Kevin McNamee-Tweed (b. 1984, Stanford, CA) explores the construction of meaning and the ways stories are formed, transmitted, and transformed through ceramics and works on paper. The artist’s pictorial ceramics—often described as “ceramic paintings”— invite close viewing, fostering intimacy through handcrafted detail and narrative density, often infused with pathos, humor, and a persistent curiosity about the world. To assemble his playful, rigorous, and deeply considered visual language, he draws from a wide range of sources. Repeated motifs are mined from art history as well as the textures and symbols of everyday life. Material inquiry and sustained experimentation drive his mark- and image-making, most notably through clay and glaze.
Kevin McNamee-Tweed has held solo exhibitions at Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Institute of Contemporary Art, Chattanooga, TN; The Museum of Human Achievement, Austin, TX; and The Menil Collection, Houston, TX. He received an MA and MFA from University of Iowa and a BFA from New York University. His work is included in the public collections of Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Institute of Contemporary Art, Chattanooga, TN; Museum Lucien de Gheus, Poperinge, Belgium; and The Bunker, West Palm Beach, FL. His work has also been shown at Museum Lucien de Gheus, Poperinge, Belgium; Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium; Dutton Gallery, New York, NY; Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, NY; Cob Gallery, London, UK; Steve Turner, Los Angeles, CA; L21 Gallery, Mallorca, Spain; Harper’s, New York, NY; among many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Ella Fountain Pratt Award, the Mildred Pelzer Grant, the Wilhelm and Jane Bodine Fellowship, The Iowa Arts Fellowship, and the Montello Foundation Fellowship. Reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Artnet, Glasstire, Le Monde, and Hyperallergic, among others. McNamee-Tweed has published extensively, including monographs, collaborative projects, and artist’s books. The artist lives and works in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Alexander Berggruen co-represents the artist with Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium.
Kevin McNamee-Tweed. Photo: Leticia Fernandez-Fontecha
KEVIN MCNAMEE-TWEED: THE WEATHER
March 5-April 1, 2026
Saying the Sun
April 24-June 16, 2024
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC
When the World’s On Fire
August 24-October 21, 2023
Institute of Contemporary Art, Chattanooga, TN
DALLAS ART FAIR 2025
April 11-13, 2025 (Preview Gala — April 10, 2025)
Ted Gahl, Paul Kremer, Vicente Matte, Kevin McNamee-Tweed, Alexandria Mento, Azadeh Nia, Kaifan Wang
In concurrent exhibitions by Kevin McNamee-Tweed and Tajh Rust, we find two artists who keep looking and discovering, despite dark circumstances.
I have come to think of Kevin McNamee-Tweed, a pictorial ceramicist, whose offbeat, tenderly absurd, improbable scenes evoke an enigmatic world, as part of the family of New York School artists that includes Joe Brainard, the British-born Trevor Winkfield, and more distantly, the British artists Glen Baxter (whose cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker) and Paul Hammond (who was also a translator and historian of Surrealism). All of them, who met at Leeds College of Art, celebrate what Hammond called the “everyday marvelous.” McNamee-Tweed fits right in with this aesthetic.
In two works, both titled “Rearview (2)” (2025–26), an empty rear-view mirror extends down from the top edge. The rest of the ceramic slabs are empty and sandy brown, as is the mirror. That emptiness suggests neither the future nor past is in sight. Being lost and baffled are recurring themes in McNamee-Tweed’s work.
— John Yau
At New York gallery Alexander Berggruen’s booth, visitors flocked to petite, wall-based ceramics by Kevin McNamee-Tweed, irresistibly charming due to their whimsy and tactility (most had sold midway through VIP day).
