VAN DER PLAS GALLERY PRESENTS

Jason McLean, Devon Marinac and Carri Skoczek.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(New York, NY, 9/10/26) Van Der Plas Gallery is pleased to present Heavenly Hoodoo Voodoo, a three-person exhibition featuring works by Jason McLean, Devon Marinac, and Carri Skoczek. The exhibition welcomes back McLean and Marinac, both longtime Van Der Plas artists, alongside Skoczek, whose work is being introduced to the gallery. Across drawing, painting, collage, assemblage, sculpture, and found materials, the exhibition brings together three distinct practices shaped by personal symbolism, humor, and unconventional visual storytelling.

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Brooklyn-based Canadian artist Jason McLean is best known for diaristic drawings that map memory, family life, and everyday observation through text, figures, and personal symbols.

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In Home Town Hero, McLean constructs a loose visual map populated by silhouettes of cartoon dogs, wings, fragments of text, and references to the number 55, reflecting the artist's current age. Words become part of the landscape itself: the "L" in "late" forms a stair within a staircase, while the branching "Y" in "happy" becomes a three-way intersection. Soft greens, yellows, and pinks give the drawing a playful quality that contrasts with some of McLean's more frenetic compositions. Created during his transition from Canada to New York, Home Town Hero approaches change through a confident, whimsical, and deliberately childlike visual language.

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McLean's work has been exhibited at institutions including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Michael Gibson Gallery, and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. His work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and Vancouver Art Gallery.

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Toronto-based Devon Marinac works across drawing, collage, painting, assemblage, sculpture, and bookmaking. His highly detailed figurative works combine recurring characters, text, everyday objects, and gestural marks.

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In A Total Work of Tart, Marinac compresses an array of figures into what resembles a crowded dance floor. The bodies subtly collide and flow in and out of one another across a warped, flattened plane, producing a scene that feels both celebratory and disturbed. Yellow bottles punctuate the upper half of the composition, labeled with Marinac's characteristic wordplay, while clever, cryptic phrases follow the curves of the figures themselves. The result is maximal, chaotic, and playful, with bodies, text, and objects competing for space within the same restless visual field.

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Marinac's work has been exhibited throughout Canada and in New York City, reviewed in The Comics Journal, and published in BOMB Magazine. His self-published books, often combining printed material with original collage, have circulated throughout North America and Europe.

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Carri Skoczek is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, printmaking, sculpture, costume design, and doll making. Portraiture and human behavior are central to her practice, particularly through depictions of women that explore sexuality, strength, sensuality, and power. Her expressive figurative style draws in part from German Expressionism, with subjects ranging from women toreadors and samurai to circus performers and other theatrical figures.

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Skoczek's voodoo dolls and talismans, like Gotham, transform discarded jewelry, toys, and found objects into assemblages associated with power, protection, love, luck, and resolution. Described by the artist as a form of "alchemy," the works give discarded objects new identities while retaining traces of their previous lives.

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Skoczek's work has been exhibited extensively in New York, throughout the United States, and internationally. Her multidisciplinary practice has also included costume design, curatorial projects, and longstanding participation in New York traditions including the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

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The exhibition opening will be held at our Orchard Street space, 156 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002.

Highlights of Work: