Art in Review, The New York Times

The Discipline of Astronomy and Wind
Sunday L.E.S.
237A Eldridge Street, Lower East Side

If the New Museum’s earning inaugural show, “Unmonumental,” is
any indication, young artists are turning to assemblage to express
fragility and fragmentation. Michael Jones McKean is not one of
them. The amalgamations of found and handmade objects on shelves in his New York
debut have a robust, formal poetry, although their associations can sometimes feel forced.

Mr. McKean’s precedents include the sculptor Jessica Stockholder’s harmonious marriages
of mass-produced items, as well as the younger artist Dario Robleto’s archaeological use of
materials. “The Freeing of Cosmonaut Volynov and Pitcher Gooden’s Song” displays a
papier-mâché replica of a helmet worn by the space-disaster survivor Boris Volynov and a
neatly folded, white-on-white copy of a 1986 Dwight Gooden jersey. Spectacular flameout
is the presumed theme.
Buried in a few of the works here are allusions to Mr. McKean’s earlier, conceptual
projects, inspired by failed expeditions. “The Ancients” contains a wood fragment from the
Teignmouth Electron, a trimaran helmed by Donald Crowhurst in his unsuccessful 1969
attempt to sail around the world without stopping. Last year Mr. McKean purchased the
remains of the vessel; his gesture would be more interesting if the film artist Tacita Dean
had not already obsessed over the same subject

By Karen Rosenberg
From New York Times, 28 September, 2007
Michael Jones McKean