E-Mail This Article to a Friend Twist-ed ‘Barry McGee’ at the Rose, ‘Films That Do Not Exist’ at Brickbottom BY RANDI HOPKINS

Think of the work of San Francisco–based artist Barry McGee and anachronistic phrases like "sad sack," "down at the heels," and "down and out" — maybe even the picture of a little hobo sack tied to the end of a stick — come to mind. A former graffiti artist, McGee creates outsized, streetwise installations that combine drawings and paintings with found objects including empty liquor bottles, abandoned cars, thrift-store picture frames, and old spray-paint cans. And they pack a serious wallop, drawing us into a different era, or maybe just into his sympathetic view of the dark side of our own. Having made a splash at international venues from the Venice Biennale to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and from Deitch Projects in New York to the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, he comes to Greater Boston this month to create a large-scale project at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis in "Barry McGee," which opens next Thursday.

As a teen in the 1980s, McGee became a kind of cult hero for his graffiti markings on the walls and tunnels of San Francisco, which he created using the tag "Twist." He went on to art school, earning a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991, but the scale and the energy of the street, along with a propensity for city-block-sized wall paintings, a possibly Beat-poetry-inspired feel for the peripatetic life, and a fondness for discarded stuff, have remained basic to his art. Yet his Rose show seems to find a few new elements creeping into his śuvre. "Of course, everything is tentative, nothing is fixed until the opening," cautions exhibition curator Raphaela Platow as she describes his impending transformation of the Rose’s enormous Lois Foster Wing. "I can say that there will be approximately 50 television sets in the space showing animated clips made in collaboration with Josh Lazcano [with whom McGee has worked in the past], and that as part of the show, there will be a huge dumpster in front of the museum, with a truck inside of it!"

So often, things are not what they seem. Jed Speare of the Mobius Artists Group examines that idea in a multimedia exhibition, "Films That Do Not Exist," that will open at Brickbottom Gallery next Friday. Art by Matthew Briggs, Eirene Efstathiou, Adaleta Maslo-Krkovic, Andrew Neumann, Amruta Patil, and Speare himself will explore ideas generated by a broad range of cinematic experiences, like grainy home movies, smoky film noir, cheesy ’70s b-movies, and "objective" documentaries. These artists aim to drag that singular experience of sitting in the dark in front of big flickering images into the bright light of the art gallery.

"Barry McGee" is at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, 415 South Street in Waltham, April 29 through July 25, with an opening reception on April 28 from 6 to 9 p.m.; call (781) 736-3434. "Films That Do Not Exist" is at Brickbottom Gallery, 1 Fitchburg Street in Somerville, April 30 through May 28, with an opening reception on April 30 from 6 to 8 p.m.; call (617) 776-3410.