McKenzie continues her exploration of architectural spaces, but enters into the austere walls of art world spaces: art fair tents, galleries, and museums. White Walls enters into those unnoticed angles of presumably hallowed art halls confronting their assumed simplicity in order to explore their architectural and conceptual complexity. McKenzie grants access to a world separated, for some, from the everyday, and glorifies a space designed to hide behind the artworks hanging on the wall.

 

Pattern and surface come to the forefront of these works when viewed in person, distancing the viewer from the architectural subject while pulling one into its geometry. These paintings often include artworks from other artists, slightly obscured and abstracted becoming a part of the scenery as opposed to the focus of the composition as would be the case in real life. In White Walls, the viewer offers the only human presence within the painting. McKenzie’s paintings force the viewer to consider his or her own position relative to the image. This absence is felt, calling attention to the convention of white walls and allowing the architecture to takes on its own physicality in the presence of the viewer.