Ask any artist who has ever painted on the street, whether graffiti or anything street art related, and Barry McGee's name will come up. He is perhaps the most influential artist to ever come from the graffiti world, not just because he was able to transform the way people looked at what graffiti art could be, but his transistion into gallery and museum worlds developed an entirely fresh and original approach of how to bring the street into a white cube space. In some respects, the way Robert Williams changed the way we looked at figurative painting, McGee has done with graffiti.

In a major showcase, McGee will open The Other Side, his debut solo show with Perrotin Gallery and his first solo show in Hong Kong, on view from October 10—November 9, 2019. McGee has long been showing works in major galleries, from Cheim & Read to Ratio 3, but his newest show at Perrotin will be another stepping show for the San Francisco artist on the international scene. Because his exhibitions are never just one thing, as McGee combines painting, sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, ceramics and even graffiti ephemera all into one space, his presentations are like treasure hunts. From surfing to graffiti, underground zine culture and found objects, these compositions are always original and harken back to a time when San Francisco itself was a bastion of outsider art.