Malik McKoy

My art practice consists of both painting and digital media, with a visual language that spans both media. My paintings are generally medium to large in scale and are made with oil and acrylic on stretched canvas. I take the mundane of my everyday experience and subvert it through the use of humour, absurdity, and abstraction. My recent paintings feature forms that reference a specific process used in 3D animation. The process is called “uv unwrapping”, which is similar to deconstructing clothing into sewing patterns. As a result, bodies and environments appear disassembled. The vibrant colour palette and cartoon-like approach to figures brings a playful layer to the work that counters the optics of fragmented bodies. The process behind this work is my attempt at bridging my analog and digital practices together, having one inform the other.

Malik McKoy (b. 1995, Surrey, B.C.) is an emerging, multidisciplinary artist whose practice consists of painting and digital media. Straddling the line between analog and digital, McKoy attempts to create a visual world that encompasses both practices. The subject matter of the work is a reflection of the banal qualities of the everyday, translated through a vibrant and playful lens. McKoy recently relocated to Montreal from Ajax, Ontario in pursuit of his MFA degree.

malikmckoy.com

Malik McKoy. DefaultSkin, 2022. oil on canvas. 32" x 32"