‘Prime Suspect’ is the first international survey exhibition of the Brussels-based Scottish artist, Lucy McKenzie (b. 1977).

The exhibition at Museum Brandhorst brings together all of the artist’s significant bodies of work from 1997 to the present.

Lucy McKenzie excavates and appropriates images, objects, and motifs from the histories of art, architecture, and design; literature, music, and film; fashion, politics, and sport.

She transforms these source materials using the outmoded techniques of nineteenth-century decorative painting, creating surprising new constellations that illuminate an alternative history of painting that emphasizes the vernacular, the domestic, and the collaborative.

The so-called ‘applied arts’ emerge as key points in a narrative that diverges from the established chronologies of the avant-garde and modern art.

This extensive and profusely illustrated catalogue documents the full range of McKenzie’s oeuvre – from her early works exploring the pageantry and iconography of international sport and the politics of postwar muralism, through her engagement with fin-de-siècle architecture and interior design and mid-century Belgian illustration.

Through her ongoing research into the intertwined histories of art, fashion and retail display, McKenzie has established herself among the most singular artistic voices of her generation.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Lucy McKenzie: Prime Suspect at Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 10 September 2020 – 21 February 2021.