GDS is pleased to present Cadillac4, the first solo presentation of Minneapolis-based artist, Shaina McCoy, in Portugal.

The exhibition features McCoy’s newest series of portraits that derive from memories, taken from her family’s photo albums. The paintings are not an archival documentation, but rather stand as memory traces of the original images, scrubbed of their details, balancing between the precipice of familiarity and anonymity and blurring private and public identity.

For Cadillac4, the artist shifts focus on different types of engagements between friends formed within family bonds and her family´s extended chosen family. In search of understanding how people are presented and present themselves, Shaina McCoy looks back to her protagonist’s past and coming of age by highlighting subtle moments of connection, familial intimacy, caring gestures, helping each other and youths bonding in both private and social settings.

With a signature style of thick, glossy and colourful brush strokes, the artist paints almost featureless faces and withholds the realistic aspect of these images by presenting just enough information in them. In McCoy’s portraits, her signature facelessness is not an erasure but an affirmation. Using the form of portraiture, she ascribes importance to them, granting them permission to take up space.