Jordan McGirk: Power Play: Gallery Hang · Wayland Town Center
Venue: Gallery Hang, 57 Andrew Ave Wayland MA 01778
Date: June 6 - 21, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION - Saturday, June 6, 5pm to 7pm
Jordan McGirk’s current paintings excavate hero myths found in art history and cultural iconography. In particular, his works that appropriate Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers – a popular American television franchise adapted from the Japanese Super Sentai series – muse on how the characters informed American adolescence in the 1990s. The brand was a cultural phenomenon that intertwined teenage power fantasies, morality plays, and camp with Western consumerism. His paintings of the heroes serve as an autobiographical timestamp, a reflection on how popular television shaped his relationships with violence and American masculinity on an individual level. McGirk’s paintings suggest that such stories leave behind a kind of psychic echo: these characters wander the landscapes of his memories long into his adulthood.
By displacing them in painterly forests, he reimagines the heroes as phantasms. They are shades wandering the wilderness between nostalgia, mythology, and art history. Their listlessness confuses the scenes further; they are champions with nothing to do. McGirk’s greenery is painted loosely and wild, mimicking the wildness found in folklore and myth. These thickets are abstractions filled with the uncanny. But the brightly colored outfits create a visual dissonance within the forests they inhabit. They don’t quite belong. In these works, McGirk assumes a serious view of nostalgia: it is not a calm place to escape, but rather a strange wilderness of composites, ghosts, and heroes with no one to fight.
LaiSun Keane is pleased to announce our participation in Gallery Hang, a pop up exhibition concept organized by Graffito SP. On view from June 6 through June 21, 2026, the gallery will present a solo exhibition of paintings by Boston artist Jordan McGirk. Participating galleries also include Robert Klein Gallery, Caira Edition, Praise Shadows Gallery, and Steve Zevitas Gallery.
Gallery Hang will take place at Wayland Town Center, 57 Andrew Avenue, Wayland, Massachusetts 01778.
The Opening Reception is on Saturday, June 6, from 5 to 7 pm and the space will be open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, June 6 and 7, June 13 and 14, and June 20 and 21, from 12 to 5 pm.
In our solo presentation titled Power Play, Jordan McGirk places characters from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers within densely painted forests that at times verge on abstraction through thick impasto and layered surfaces. Drawing from the inspirations of a long running television series that shaped many millennials in the 1990s and early 2000s, McGirk examines ideas of American masculinity, cultural appropriation, camp, cosplay, and the performative nature of heroism. Through memory and nostalgia, the paintings reflect on his childhood before the presence of social media while reconsidering familiar narratives of good and evil.
Jordan McGirk is an artist working in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis. McGirk’s work explores and critiques images of Western hypermasculinity, escapism, and the failing Anthropocene.
McGirk has exhibited work nationally, including at Amos Eno Gallery in New York, Waterloo Arts Gallery in Ohio, AVC Gallery in California, Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington, D.C., Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, MO, the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, and Houska Gallery in St. Louis.
This marks our first presentation of McGirk’s work, and we are especially proud to champion emerging Boston-based artists whenever possible.
About Graffito SP
Graffito is a Boston-based retail real estate advisory and investment firm that excels at the intersection of master planning, retail leasing, and branding. They plan and establish active, inclusive, and valuable ground floor spaces by elevating creative retail operators and amplifying community character in the places they work. They take this pursuit seriously, knowing that they have the ability to leverage the power of real estate development to spur social and economic investments that tackle systemic inequities and create the types of cities that wants to live in.
For press inquiries, images, or additional information, please contact LaiSun Keane at laisun@laisunkeane.com or 978 495 6697.
